New opportunities for the conversion of glycerol into value-added chemicals have emerged in recent years as a result of glycerol's unique structure, properties, bioavailability, and renewability. Glycerol is currently produced in large amounts during the transesterification of fatty acids into biodiesel and as such represents a useful by-product. This paper provides a comprehensive review and critical analysis on the different reaction pathways for catalytic conversion of glycerol into commodity chemicals, including selective oxidation, selective hydrogenolysis, selective dehydration, pyrolysis and gasification, steam reforming, thermal reduction into syngas, selective transesterification, selective etherification, oligomerization and polymerization, and conversion of glycerol into glycerol carbonate.

Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant and bio-renewable resource with great potential for sustainable production of chemicals and fuels. This critical review provides insights into the state-of the-art accomplishments in the chemocatalytic technologies to generate fuels and value-added chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass, with an emphasis on its major component, cellulose. Catalytic hydrolysis, solvolysis, liquefaction, pyrolysis, gasification, hydrogenolysis and hydrogenation are the major processes presently studied. Regarding catalytic hydrolysis, the acid catalysts cover inorganic or organic acids and various solid acids such as sulfonated carbon, zeolites, heteropolyacids and oxides. Liquefaction and fast pyrolysis of cellulose are primarily conducted over catalysts with proper acidity/basicity. Gasification is typically conducted over supported noble metal catalysts. Reaction conditions, solvents and catalysts are the prime factors that affect the yield and composition of the target products. Most of processes yield a complex mixture, leading to problematic upgrading and separation. An emerging technique is to integrate hydrolysis, liquefaction or pyrolysis with hydrogenation over multifunctional solid catalysts to convert lignocellulosic biomass to value-added fine chemicals and bio-hydrocarbon fuels. And the promising catalysts might be supported transition metal catalysts and zeolite-related materials. There still exist technological barriers that need to be overcome (229 references).

Since the start of last century, methanol synthesis has attracted great interests because of its importance in chemical industries and its potential as an environmentally friendly energy carrier. The catalyst for the methanol synthesis has been a key area of research in order to optimize the reaction process. In the literature, the nature of the active site and the effects of the promoter and support have been extensively investigated. In this updated review, the recent progresses in the catalyst innovation, optimization of the reaction conditions, reaction mechanism, and catalyst performance in methanol synthesis are comprehensively discussed. Key issues of catalyst improvement are highlighted, and areas of priority in R&D are identified in the conclusions.

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