Howdy Jones,
SCWO has been around for awhile. UT-Austin, Huntsman( had taken over the
Texaco Research lab in Austin), U of Michigan and General Atomic were
"involved" in a research program funded by "uncle sugar" back awhile.
Dumb me became interested in all the claims published regarding this "new
technology" and made inquiries at UT-Austin, Huntsman and U of Michigan. The
result was a comment from one at Huntsman.. "yea, we were working on a unit,
it's probably back in the back, yea, it worked.. what? how much product did
it clean.. oh.. I don't remember.. probably a quart... No, I don't think
it's working right now.. it was just a pilot version. Told me to ask U of
Michigan about it.. they referred me to Huntsman.. hehe!
Many million dollars and a quart of "purified product" later.. absolute
silence on the matter. Great idea.. problem is pressures needed above 800
PSI and temperatures above 1500 F.. sorta makes a pressure vessel that can
handle 2000 GPD some kinda ... well. err.. think of it like this .. the
vessel wall would need to be "pretty thick" to handle the pressure at
elevated temperatures.. like 3 feet thick.. hmm.. Maybe we could take the
drydocked battleship Texas, use the armor plate, layer the plate and
"shazzaam" a SCWO... except. maybe we gotta problem with the pump seals ..
err. Call the experts at the Dime Box Saloon research lab.
OK. lets just try dumping the stuff in the Ohio river and say no more about
it.. after all, wez the military and we owns the EPA.
Jones wrote,
Think about water and steam and the supercritical
overlap of the two. This is where things are not well
understood and anomalies happen. This page on Wiki is
a good introduction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_water_oxidation
