Thermodynamic and transport property modeling in super critical water

Supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) is a thermally-based, remediation and waste-treatment process that relies on unique property changes of water when water is heated and pressurized above its critical point. Above its critical point (374.1 ⁰C and 220.9 bar), water becomes gas-like and somewhat non-polar due to the decrease in density and disruption of the hydrogen-bond network. When oxidants and organic compounds are combined with supercritical water (SCW), they rapidly form a single phase, and these organics are quickly and completely oxidized to simple molecules including water and carbon dioxide. Laboratory research is currently being conducted in order to increase the level of understanding of key SCWO areas including reaction kinetics, corrosion, and salt-related phenomena and in order to develop realistic SCWO process and fluid-dynamic simulators. Understanding the phenomena in each of these areas requires accurate thermodynamic- and transport-property predictions. However, these often do not exist. Furthermore, available correlations are often used in operating regimes where they were not originally validated, thereby potentially reducing their accuracy. This thesis focuses on the development of accurate thermodynamic-property and diffusivity- transport-property models for use at typical SCWO operating conditions, namely 25 ⁰C =/< T =/< 650 ⁰C and 1 bar =/< P =/< 300 bar, along with the measurement of molecular diffusivity, an important transport-phenomena property. These models can be incorporated into simulation tools which are used to model SCWO processes or physically simulate the flow, kinetics, corrosion, salt nucleation, and salt precipitation inside SCWO reactors.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Chemical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Kutney, Michael C. (Michael Charles)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• K.A. Smith and J.W. Tester.

• Chemical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/32335
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/32335

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/32335