Update on Sub- and Supercritical Water Processing

1. Update on Sub- and Supercritical Water Processing Gary Leeke School of Chemical Engineering

2. PhD students Boris Tapah – EPSRC - Started 2009 Hydrogen and platform chemicals from biomass Rafael Orozco – CONACYT - Started 2008 Joint with Lynne Macaskie Sustainable hydrogen production from fermentable industrial wastes Projects Supercritical water Subcritical water

3. Supercritical Water 2 Completed equipment 3 Conditions: 100 to 300 bar 350 to 800 K 1 Initial Focus on Catalyst selection for H2 generation SCW flow process pilot plant

4. Sub-critical Water Sub-critical water batch reactor

5. Some Results Reaction products at 70 bar 220 to 280 oC at 10 oC increments Water soluble products after filtration Carbon and oil appeared at 260 oC

6. Some Results 20 mM 10 mM Glucose yield and pH at 70 bar c. 83% at 533K (260°C) Degradation to furans, glyceraldehydes > 260 °C

7. Future work- next 6 months Trial supercritical water pilot plant for H2 production; test catalysts Addition of activated carbon to subcritical water process to remove cell toxic components. Addition of CO2 to subcritical water process to lower hydrolysis conditions Proposals BBSRC –IBTI; Kerry Burton (PI), Dan Eastwood, Gary Leeke, Regina Santos – outline submitted Nov 2009 – Omega 3 production from fungal growth on straw coupled with supercritical CO2 fractionation BBSRC – IBTI; Regina Santos (PI) and Gary Leeke – outline submitted Nov 2009 – Bioethanol production from wheat and sugar beet EPSRC – Gary Leeke (PI), Kerry Burton tbs Feb 2010 – Integration of Solid State biorefinery with Aqueous Phase Reforming