Calibration of temperature measurement by infrared pyrometry in microwave heating of powder materials: an exothermic reaction based approach.

Accurate temperature measurement remains a challenge for microwave heating of powder materials. We propose a temperature calibration method based on exothermic reactions and the resultant thermal runaway that occurs during microwave heating. The approach was demonstrated on microwave heating of four titanium alloys. Differential scanning calorimetry was used to determine the threshold reaction temperature for each selected titanium alloy. This served as a standard for the microwave heating of these titanium alloys. Infrared pyrometric temperature measurements were then calibrated by comparing the starting temperature of each thermal runaway event with the threshold reaction temperature.