supercritical water gasification of biomass: a literature and technology overview

The supercritical water gasification process is an alternative to both conventional gasification as well as anaerobic digestion as it does not require drying and the process takes place at much shorter residence times; a few minutes at most. The drastic changes in the thermo-physical properties of water from the liquid state to the supercritical state make it a promising technology for the efficient conversion of wet biomass into a product gas that after upgrading can be used as substitute natural gas. The earliest research goes back as far as the 1970s and since then, supercritical water has been the subject of many research works in the field of thermochemical conversion of wet biomass. This article reviews the state of the art of the supercritical water gasification technology starting from the thermophysical properties of water and the chemistry of reactions to the process challenges of such a biomass based supercritical water gasification process plant.