Journal of Supercritical Fluids, Vol.80, 23-29, 2013
Supercritical water oxidation of nitrogen compounds with multi-injection of oxygen
A supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) process with oxidant multi-injection was studied in a continuous flow system in which the same amount of oxidant feed is split between two points - a first injection at the reactor inlet and a second injection at one of the three different positions along the reactor. Under the same operating conditions, this multi-injection configuration showed advantages over the system with a single oxidant entry. Moreover, oxidant dosage in a SCWO reactor is a key aspect in energy management. In this work, experiments were performed to find the best oxidant dosage to obtain the maximum organic conversion. Experiments were carried out using N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) as a model compound for nitrogen-containing hydrocarbons in wastewaters. All experiments were carried out at 250 bar with an oxygen coefficient n = 1 and a temperature of 400 degrees C. Each experiment was carried out at five different residence times (2, 4, 6, 8 and 105). Once the best configuration had been determined, the effect of temperature (400-550 degrees C), initial organic concentration (5-30 mM), oxygen coefficient (0.5-3) and residence time (2-10 s) was investigated in the SCWO process of DMF. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.