Microwave Thawing and Tempering

Microwave (MW) thawing/tempering is an emerging defrosting technology for food and agricultural products. It has advantages of rapid and effective heating, high energy efficiency, and high throughput capacity as compared to conventional methods. However, the drawback of possible runaway heating on the surface of samples hinders the development. This chapter introduces the principle of MW heating and defrosting, describes the structure of typical apparatuses, and analyze the advantages over conventional techniques. This chapter also reviews the variation of dielectric properties (DPs) of materials during the thawing/tempering process, the information about which could provide guide in improving heating uniformity for both experiments and computer simulation. A comprehensive overview on the strategies to improve the MW thawing/tempering technique is provided. This chapter proposes recommendations for future researches in enhancing and optimizing the existing MW defrosting protocols and scaling up them to industrial applications.