Heating is one of the most energy-hungry steps in industrial chemistry, but scientists from the University of Tokyo have found a clever way to make it much more efficient—using microwaves.
Their new technique focuses heat only where it’s needed, instead of wasting energy heating up entire reactors.
The result?
Chemical reactions that are about 4.5 times more efficient than those produced by traditional heating methods.
Many chemical reactions that create everyday materials—from fuels to fertilizers—require high temperatures.
But conventional heating methods, such as burning gas or circulating hot fluids, are wasteful because they heat everything, not just the small regions where reactions actually happen.
“In most cases, chemical reactions occur only at very small, localized regions involving just a few atoms or molecules,” said Lecturer Fuminao Kishimoto from the Department of Chemical System Engineering at the University of Tokyo.
“This means that even within a large chemical reactor, only limited parts truly require energy input for the reaction.”
To solve this inefficiency, Kishimoto and his team turned to microwaves, similar to those used in household ovens.
While kitchen microwaves heat food by exciting water molecules at around 2.45 gigahertz, the researchers used lower-frequency microwaves (900 megahertz) to target specific atoms inside a special porous material called zeolite.
This material acts like a sponge filled with tiny cavities.
Inside these cavities, the scientists placed indium ions, which act like miniature antennas. When exposed to microwaves, these ions vibrate and generate localized heat right at the reaction sites—precisely where it’s needed.
Creating this precise heating effect wasn’t easy. “The most challenging aspect was proving that only a single atomic active site was being heated by the microwaves,” Kishimoto explained.
The team spent four years building a specialized experimental setup at Japan’s world-class SPring-8 synchrotron radiation facility to study the process.
Their tests confirmed that energy was indeed being delivered at the atomic scale, making the heating both targeted and efficient.
This breakthrough has big implications for green chemistry and climate solutions. By using microwaves to heat only tiny reaction zones, researchers can perform complex reactions at much lower overall temperatures.
For example, they successfully demonstrated processes like water decomposition (to produce hydrogen fuel) and methane conversion, which could be used to recycle carbon dioxide and create cleaner fuels.
The team also believes the same method could help recycle plastics and capture CO₂ more effectively.
However, bringing this laboratory innovation into industrial use won’t be easy. The materials involved are expensive and difficult to produce, and measuring exact temperatures at the atomic scale remains a challenge.
Kishimoto and his team are now working on improving the durability of catalysts, refining reactor design, and finding ways to integrate the system with renewable energy sources like solar or wind.
“We expect pilot-scale demonstrations within the next decade,” Kishimoto said. “But large-scale industrial adoption will depend on continued progress in both the technology and energy infrastructure. We’re now seeking industry partners to help move this forward.”
If successful, this microwave-based approach could mark a major step toward cleaner, more sustainable industrial chemistry, cutting both energy use and carbon emissions—one atomic hotspot at a time.
