Ethanol oxidation in subcritical water was examined at 25 MPa in the temperature range of 260-350 degrees C with equivalence ratio of 0.6. With oxygen as the oxidiser, the overall first-order decomposition reaction parameters were determined to be 10(2.9 +/- 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. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.