Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) has been proved to be a powerful technology to eliminate a wide range of wastes, but there are few references in the literature about the application of SCWO to oily wastes. Even though these industrial wastes are quite important due to their large volume and toxicity, no attempt to study the kinetics involved have been found in the literature. In this work, SCWO have been tested to treat cutting oil wastes in a continuous flow system operating at 400-500 degreesC. In order to simplify the kinetic study of a complex waste, a generalized kinetic model available in the literature has been proved to represent the evolution of the oxidation process in terms of TOC and acetic acid. A modification of that model is proposed here, considering carbon monoxide as the main refractory intermediate in the reaction scheme. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science BN. All rights reserved.