Design and Validation of a Supercritical Water Gasification Reactor with In Situ Raman Spectroscopy for the Determination of Chemical Kinetic Rates

Abstract

Supercritical water technology has the potential to enable the safe and complete destruction of hazardous chemical compounds, including chemical waste and chemical warfare agents. While the underlying technology shows promise, quantitative determination of chemical kinetic rates under these conditions are needed to facilitate the design of full scale technology. Collecting these needed data requires a versatile reactor capable of determining chemical decomposition rates. Critical parameters include temperature, residence time, and catalytic wall effects. The literature shows significant differences in the published chemical kinetic rates, which is at least partially attributed to variations in reactor design. To determine best practices, existing reactor designs, components, and technologies, as well as some promising new technologies, are reviewed. From this overview, a reactor specialized for the gasification of organic compounds was designed featuring in situ Raman monitoring of the effluent stream. In addition to the design of the reactor, some basic processing techniques for Raman baseline signal subtraction are discussed, along with preliminary results for organic compounds decomposition. With the reactor completed, the rapid determination of chemical kinetic rates in supercritical water becomes possible for a wide range of reagents and operating conditions.