Supercritical Water Biomass Gasification Process As a Successful Solution to Valorize Wine Distillery Wastewaters

Abstract

The biomass is the whole organic matter of vegetable or animal origin. This material can be valorized in various ways: it can be used by manufacturers (lumber, paper, and biochemistry); it can be used as energy (heat, electricity, and fuel); and it can be used as food or in cosmetics. Various processes are nowadays used to valorize biomass. This work deals with the potentialities of the biomass gasification in supercritical water. The objective is to demonstrate the potentiality of this process to treat some aqueous waste from distillery to obtain a syngas with a high hydrogen yield. The bioresources of this study come from some agricultural alcohol (beet, sugar cane, and cereal) and wine-producing distilleries. Experiments have been carried out at different conversion severities, using a 100 mL batch reactor, during 0–60 min, at a pressure of 25 MPa and at temperatures between 400 and 500 °C. Complete product analyses will be presented. Particularly detailed gas analyses have been performed. The sodium a...