Microwave-driven zeolite-guest systems show athermal effects from nonequilibrium molecular dynamics.

Nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations show that steady-state systems obtained by microwave heating are qualitatively different from those at thermal equilibrium. This difference arises because energy transfer from hotter to colder species is not efficient enough to equilibrate the distribution of energy. Under nonequilibrium conditions, we found that microwave radiation can selectively heat methanol in a binary mixture of methanol-benzene adsorbed in faujasite zeolite. The difference in steady-state temperatures follows the trend Tmethanol > Tbenzene > Tzeolite, which is qualitatively consistent with recent experimental results.