CHEMICAL-PROCESSING IN HIGH-PRESSURE AQUEOUS ENVIRONMENTS .3. BATCH REACTOR PROCESS-DEVELOPMENT EXPERIMENTS FOR ORGANICS DESTRUCTION

A high-pressure (20 MPa) and high-temperature (350-degrees-C) liquid w ater processing environment was used to treat various wastewaters and model compounds. Organics were converted to methane and carbon dioxide in the presence of catalysts. Functional types included hydrocarbons, both aliphatic and aromatic; phenolics and other oxygenates; chlorina ted hydrocarbon solvents; and sodium salts of organic acids. Tests wit h aqueous nickel ion showed negligible catalytic activity. Noncatalyti c hydrolysis of sodium cyanide, carbon tetrachloride, and chloroform w as also demonstrated. Ammonium destruction was proven by reaction with nitrate at these processing conditions. Several examples of test resu lts with actual industrial waste streams showed that this process can be effectively used with catalysts to clean wastewater and recover was te organics as useful fuel gas.