Hot compressed water in the sub- and supercritical state exhibits exciting physical and
chemical properties, which can be varied continuously from gas-like to liquid-like behaviour.
Correspondingly, the solvent properties can change from non-polar behaviour as present,
for example, in organic solvents to highly ionic characteristics like in salt melts. This opens
up several promising opportunities for separation processes and chemical reactions. Under
supercritical conditions, substantial amounts of gases and organic substances can
homogeneously be mixed with water, which then can be separated by adjusting the
subcritical conditions by forming additional phases. This can beneficially be combined
with chemical reactions occurring in the homogeneous state leading to integrated
processes, which are more effective and competitive. Three approaches to the technical
application of hot compressed water are presented to show and discuss the technology,
potential, technical hurdles and future research demand in this area of research and
development.
In supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) water is used as a medium in which
organic pollutants are completely degraded under the addition of oxygen,
which is completely miscible with water under the process conditions of up to
650 °C
and pressures around 25 MPa. Thus, high space–time yields in compact reactor
designs can be realized.
Hydrogen is produced from biomass by hydrothermal gasification. Here, in an
excess of water, the reaction at temperatures up to 700 °C
and pressures around 30 MPa directly leads to valuable hydrogen instead of
synthetic gas, as in conventional gasification processes, or methane at subcritical
conditions in water. After reaction, pressurized hydrogen is obtained and can
easily be enriched due to the different partition coefficients of hydrogen and
carbon dioxide between the aqueous and gas phase.
Even homogeneous catalysis is possible in supercritical water. This
has been demonstrated with the cobalt-catalysed cyclotrimerization of
acetylenes to form benzene derivatives or hydroformylation to produce
aldehydes from olefins. There, only the addition of CO is necessary, the
H2
required being formed by the equilibrium of the water–gas-shift reaction. After
a homogeneous reaction in the supercritical state, the reaction mixture can be
separated at subcritical conditions.
In support of the chemical and technical developments and to principally understand the
experimental findings fundamental aspects have to be investigated as well. Intensive studies
have been devoted to chemical kinetics including the modelling with elementary reaction
steps, e.g. to separate ionic and radical reaction pathways. Depending on the reaction
conditions, ionic or radical reaction pathways can be favoured or suppressed, allowing for
control selectivity. Furthermore, corrosion of relevant reactor materials has been
investigated.