Supercritical water processes: future prospects

Abstract

This contribution examines the challenges faced by supercritical water processes for industrial development. As an alternative, the intensification of the supercritical water processes is presented in order to reduce the size of the equipment needed and to facilitate the scaling up of the process. The perspective of developing micro combustors using hydrothermal flames as the internal heat source could open up an alternative for the in-situ energy generation in biorefineries, for example. The fundamental studies about supercritical water hydrolysis using ultrafast reactors has enabled extremely high selectivity in the biomass fractionation processes, and in the production of C2 and C3 building blocks from key components. The high-energy consumption of this process is another issue that limit its commercialization. In the examples proposed, the energy, work recovery and energy integration allows the reduction of the total energy consumption and, in some processes, the availability of extra energy as heat and work.