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Supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) technology presents important environmental advantages for the treatment of industrial wastes and sludges. The homogeneous reaction that takes place between the oxidizable materials and oxygen, at temperatures and pressures above the critical point of the water (647.3 K and 22.12 MPa), is well known. Specific equations of state for water and aqueous mixtures, gases, and organics have been developed. The process is not having the expected industrial development. Some new plants have been closed by corrosion and operational problems related with high temperature, high pressure, and oxidative atmosphere inside of the equipments. To overcome these technical difficulties more research focused on solving operational problems is necessary. This article presents an overview of the technical aspects of the supercritical water oxidation process. Reactors design, construction materials, corrosion, salts precipitation problems, and industrial applications are discussed. © 2006 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2006

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The use of natural antioxidants in the food industry has increased in the last years and there is a growing interest in improving the extraction processes using GRAS (general recognize as safe) solvents. In this work the extraction of antioxidants from rosemary with ethanol and water as solvents has been studied using different extraction processes (conventional, microwave assisted – MAE – and ultrasound assisted – USAE –) and plant pretreatments (deoiled and milled, deoiled and fresh plant). Total phenolic compounds in the extracts were determined by the Folin–Ciocalteu assay and HPLC with UV detection was employed for the quantitation of the main antioxidant compounds: rosmarinic acid and carnosic acid. The antioxidant activity of the extract was determined by the DPPHradical dot scavenging assay. The double pretreatment, deoiling by solvent free microwave extraction (SFME) and milling, has shown to be essential to overcome inner mass transfer limitations. Extraction efficiency can be additionally enhanced by microwave and ultrasound assisted extraction process, being this latter more significant in aqueous extracts.Fil: Rodríguez Rojo, Soraya. Universidad de Valladolid. Escuela de Ingenierías Industriales; EspañaFil: Visentin, Alexis Nahuel. Universidad de Valladolid. Escuela de Ingenierías Industriales; España. Universidad Nacional de Rio Cuarto; ArgentinaFil: Maestri, Damian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Cocero, María J.. Universidad de Valladolid. Escuela de Ingenierías Industriales; Españ

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The demand for hydrogen peroxide is booming since it is considered as one of the most environmentally friendly and versatile chemical oxidants available and has a wide range of applications. The annual market, close to 3000 kt per year being produced via the auto-oxidation process (with 2-ethyl anthraquinone (traditional) or amyl anthraquinone for mega-plants), is mostly supplied by the company Solvay (30%), followed by Evonik (20%) and Arkema (13%). Nevertheless, the dream of a direct synthesis process is close to a century old and it has gained momentum in research efforts during the last decade with more than 15 groups active in the world. In this review, we focus the discussion on the targets, e.g. plant tonnage, the reactors and the most feasible industrial operational conditions, based on our experience and point of view using the chemical engineering tools available. Thus, direct synthesis can be competitive when on-site production is required and capacities less than 10 kt per year are He has led and participated in 3 EU, 6 national/regional projects and 10+ SME contracts and has published 30+ research papers. Teresa MorenoTeresa Moreno obtained her degree in Chemical Engineering from Complutense University (Madrid, Spain) and later completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Valladolid (Spain, 2011) studying the catalytic direct synthesis of hydrogen peroxide in supercritical CO 2 and the online determination of the product using Raman spectroscopy. She is currently a Research Scientist in the Industrial Bioactive Technologies Group at Callaghan Innovation (New Zealand) working on the development of processes for adding value to natural materials toward high value products and applications, including the development of sustainable technologies using supercritical fluids. View Article OnlineView Journal | View Issue and semi-continuous modes of operation. However, at the moment, demonstrations of continuous operations as well as carefully determined kinetics are needed in order to scale up the process. Finally, operational conditions, including the catalyst composition (active metal, oxidation state and support), promoters (halides and acids-pH-isoelectric point), solvents, pressure and temperature need to be carefully analysed. In our opinion, as we try to show here, H 2 O 2 direct synthesis is a competitive process and is ready for larger scale demonstration. Also, more than a hundred patents within the area support this claim, although the barriers of technology demonstration and further licensing are still pending.

9Biomass fractionation into its individual building blocks poses a major challenge