Current and Foreseeable Applications of Supercritical Water for Energy and the Environment

It is crucial to develop economical and energy-efficient processes for the sustainable transformation of biomass into fuels and chemicals. In this context, supercritical water biomass valorization (SCBV) processes are on alternative way to produce biogas, biofuels, and valuable chemicals. Supercritical,water technology has seen much progress over the lost fifteen years and on industrial application has merged: the supercritical water oxidation of wastes. The evolution from lob-scale to pilot-scale facilities has provided data on reaction mechanisms, kinetics, modeling, and reactor technology as well as an important know-how, which can now be exploited to use the reactivity in supercritical water to transform biomass into gases (CO, H-2, CO2, CH4, and N-2) or into liquids (liquid fuel and valuable chemicals) with the supercritical water biomass gasification and liquefaction processes, respectively. This Review highlights the potential of SCBV processes to transform biomass into gas and liquid energy sources and highlights the developments that ore still necessary to push this technology onto the market.