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Conversion of polymers and biomass to chemical intermediates with supercritical water
Author(s) -
Arai Kunio
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
macromolecular symposia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.257
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1521-3900
pISSN - 1022-1360
DOI - 10.1002/masy.19981350123
Subject(s) - supercritical fluid , cellulose , polymer , char , pyrolysis , chemistry , chemical engineering , organic chemistry , monomer , chemical reaction , polymer chemistry , engineering
Recent results are described on conversion of polymers and biomass to chemical intermediates and monomers by using subcritical and supercritical water as the reaction solvent. Reactions of cellulose in supercritical water are rapid (<50 ms) and proceed to 100% conversion with no char formation. They show a remarkable increase in hydrolysis products and lower pyrolysis products when compared with reactions in subcritical water. Further, there is a jump in the reaction rate of cellulose at the critical temperature of water. If the methods used for cellulose are applied to synthetic polymers, such as PET, nylon or others, high liquid yields can be achieved although the reactions require about 10 min for complete conversion. The reason is the heterogeneous nature of the reaction system. For polyethylene, higher yields of short‐chain hydrocarbons, higher alkene/alkane ratios and higher conversions were obtained in supercritical water than those obtained by pyrolysis.