ASE Industries built its own hydrothermal reactor.  Below is a diagram of this reactor.  When water is elevated in temperature and pressure its properties change.  Near the super critical point the chemical characteristics of water change dramatically.  It becomes a highly active organic solvent which can easily and quickly break apart cellulose and lignin.  Lignin is found in woody biomass, and gives wood its strength.   The reactor was built to allow us to investigate biomass conversions in the supercritical regime of water.

The reactor was designed to run in the non-continuous, or batch mode.  Biomass was loaded into the reactor chamber and put through various pressures and temperatures.  The reactor operated at temperatures up to 735°C (1350 °F) and pressures up to 485MPa (4800 psi).  The reactor was modified from the above diagram for a test to be able to give preliminary data on the rate of reaction for hardwood biomass.

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