Supercritical Water Gasification of glycerol: Continuous reactor kinetics and transport phenomena modeling

Supercritical Water Gasification of glycerol is carried out on a continuous tubular reactor at 25 MPa and 610 degrees C. A design of experiments is performed at three levels of glycerol concentration (2.5; 5; and 10%) and three levels of inflow rate (125; 250; and 375 mL/min). The process outputs are the molar production of H-2; CH4; CO2; CO; and C2H6. The influence of Stainless Steel 316 and Inconel-625 as reactor materials is compared. A compartment model is implemented considering the system as a heat exchanger in series with a wall reactor. Heat transfer influence on reactivity is successfully captured. The results are useful and accurate in describing global stoichiometry. H-2, CH4, and CO2 productivity are fairly predicted. The catalytic effect of Inconel-625 manifests from the CO2 to CO ratio when compared with Stainless Steel 316. Inconel-625 is 50% more productive in terms of C-2 hydrocarbons and 40% more active towards CH4 production, which is detrimental in 50% of the H-2 yield. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)