Measuring material temperature in high-temperature microwave-based heating process: a virtual sensor approach

Virtual sensors are pivotal to provide measures that would be extremely hard to make through the use of traditional hard sensors. This paper discusses an artificial intelligence-based approach for measuring temperature of the material being processed in a high-temperature microwave kiln. Preliminary results are reported for calcined clays, with temperature values up to approximately 500 °C. The results show that material temperature can be effectively predicted by the virtual sensor (average mean absolute error: 2.4 °C). The very same approach is currently being developed for other types of materials being processed through microwave-heating, such as ceramic pigments and iron bearing residues.