Hazardous organic compounds present in aqueous waste streams can be rapidly and safely converted to CO2 and H2O through homogeneous oxidation reactions. When the reaction conditions exceed both the critical pressure and critical temperature of water, this oxidative treatment process is referred to as supercritical water oxidation (SCWO). SCWO is promising new technology for waste destruction, and it is attracting increasing attention for possible applications such as water purification as part of a life-support system for manned space missions, and the destruction of military hazardous waste, mixed wastes, and wastes from the chemical, petroleum, and pulp and paper industries. The design, optimization, and control of an SCWO process requires knowledge of the governing reaction kinetics. The PIs will conduct parallel experimental and modeling studies to determine these governing kinetics. One part of the work involves developing phenomenological reaction models for the SCWO of real pollutants. They will determine global rate laws for reactant disappearance, CO2 prod uction, and byproduct formation and destruction by correlating the large sets of experimental data. They also plan to develop a mechanism-based reaction model for SCWO chemistry and perform the experiments necessary to validate the model, which will be based on individual elementary reaction steps and their associated kinetics. They plan to develop reliable mechanism-based models for the oxidation of increasingly complex organic compounds individually and as mixtures by these techniques.
