Kinetics of ethanol oxidation in subcritical water

Ethanol oxidation in subcritical water was examined at 25 MPa in the temperature range of 260–350 °C with equivalence ratio of 0.6. With oxygen as the oxidiser, the overall first-order decomposition reaction parameters were determined to be 102.9 ± 0.4 s−1 for the pre-exponential factor and 53.8 ± 4.6 kJ mol−1 for the activation energy. The products obtained by the hydrothermal oxidation of ethanol were acetaldehyde, acetic acid, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. First-order kinetics was enough to capture the main characteristics of species concentration profiles. Consecutive reaction network: C2H5OH → CH3CHO → CH3COOH → CO → CO2 well described the behaviour of components obtained from wet oxidation of ethanol.