Update on Sub- and Supercritical Water Processing Gary Leeke School of Chemical Engineering

Projects PhD students Boris Tapah – EPSRC - Started 2009 Hydrogen and platform chemicals from biomass Rafael Orozco – CONACYT - Started 2008 Joint with Lynne Macaskie Sustainable hydrogen production from fermentable industrial wastes Supercritical water Subcritical water

Initial Focus on Catalyst selection for H 2 generation Completed equipment Supercritical Water Conditions: 100 to 300 bar 350 to 800 K SCW flow process pilot plant 1 2 3

Sub-critical Water Sub-critical water batch reactor

Some Results Carbon and oil appeared at 260 o C Water soluble products after filtration Reaction products at 70 bar 220 to 280 o C at 10 o C increments

Some Results Degradation to furans, glyceraldehydes > 260 °C 10 mM 20 mM Glucose yield and pH at 70 bar c. 83% at 533K (260°C)

Future work- next 6 months Trial supercritical water pilot plant for H 2 production; test catalysts Addition of activated carbon to subcritical water process to remove cell toxic components. Addition of CO 2 to subcritical water process to lower hydrolysis conditions Proposals BBSRC –IBTI; Kerry Burton (PI), Dan Eastwood, Gary Leeke, Regina Santos – outline submitted Nov 2009 – Omega 3 production from fungal growth on straw coupled with supercritical CO 2 fractionation BBSRC – IBTI; Regina Santos (PI) and Gary Leeke – outline submitted Nov 2009 – Bioethanol production from wheat and sugar beet EPSRC – Gary Leeke (PI), Kerry Burton tbs Feb 2010 – Integration of Solid State biorefinery with Aqueous Phase Reforming