A numerical study of supercritical water oxidation of phenol

Supercritical water oxidation has attracted attention of many researchers ever since the ideahas emerged about three decades ago as a promising technique in the waste managementindustry. Providing more details about the behavior of a supercritical water oxidation systemunder various operating conditions and extending available data can greatly assist more accurateand reliable design of such systems. In this study, oxidation of phenol in supercritical water hasbeen modeled as a plug flow reactor. The variations of main system parameters such astemperature and waste concentration along the reactor have been calculated. The numericalmodel predictions have been compared with available experiments and good agreement has beenobtained for steady state operation conditions. In addition, the responses of the numerical modelto some unsteady events, such as sudden increases of mass flow rate or fluid inlet temperaturehave been examined. These situations may possibly occur due to malfunction of variouscomponents of the system. It has been shown that the design temperature of the reactor withusual consideration of the safety factors supports the probable range of sudden alterations.