Continuous Monitoring of Total Organic Carbon Based on Supercritical Water Oxidation Improved by CuSO4 Catalyst

Supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) is a new-fashioned technology of waste treatment proposed by Modell in the 1980s [1]. It can oxidize organic pollutants, difficult to be degraded, efficiently and completely [2] and has received a great deal of attention as an effective and promising treatment method of hazardous organic pollutants [3]. Water is a kind of excellent solvent when the temperature and pressure exceed its critical point (T=374.3°C, P=22.1 MPa). One of its greatest properties is that it becomes completely miscible with gas and various organic compounds [3,4]. Heterogeneous reaction between gas and liquid will become homogeneous reaction under supercritical conditions, as the reaction then is no longer limited by interphase mass transfer, the reaction can be greatly accelerated [4-6]. For last decades, SCWO has most often been used to treat dilute organic waste streams that may be otherwise difficult to process. Studies on SCWO have been mainly focused on the oxidation of various organic compounds including PCBs and dioxins [7]. But the utilization of SCWO in TOC detection is rarely reported.