Supercritical water gasification of microalgae and their constituents in a continuous reactor

The supercritical water gasification of Nannochloropsis gaditana microalgae has been studied in term of process development at 24 MPa and 663 °C. Gasification has been investigated using a 200 cm3 down flow reactor working continuously. The effect of microalgae slurry concentration, with or without alkali catalysts, was studied. Moreover, the role played by different constituents of microalgae on gasification was investigated. Particularly, gasification of amino acids, carbohydrates and model mixtures among them was studied. Nannochloropsis gaditana was successfully gasified up to 97.4 wt% as gasification efficiency and 86.0 wt% as carbon efficiency. The product gas is mainly composed of hy…