A spectral numerical model and an experimental investigation on radial microwave irradiation of water and ethanol in a cylindrical vessel

•Spectral method first used for modeling radial microwave irradiation of liquids.•Good agreement between experiments and numerics for MWI of water and ethanol.•Spatio-temporal description of temperature and velocity for the irradiated solvents. In this paper the heating of a liquid sample in a cylindrical container subject to radial microwave irradiation is studied numerically and experimentally. Two different solvents are used: water and ethanol. The model includes temperature dependence of the dielectric properties. A multi-dimensional axisymmetric numerical model based on spectral element methods, which allows the achievements of accurate results with low order spatial expansions, is developed for solving heat and momentum equations coupled with Maxwell’s equations. Laboratory experiments are performed in a monomode microwave reactor. Numerical and experimental results are compared and analyzed. Results are of interest as they provide new possibilities in the prediction and understanding of the thermal behavior of a solvent under microwave irradiation.