Conversion of Glycerol into Value Added Products by Catalytic Processing

Abstract

The conversion of glycerol into value added chemicals have emerged in recent years as a result of glycerol unique structure, properties, bioavailability, and renewability. Glycerol is produced in large amounts during trans-esterification of fatty acids into biodiesel, and as such represents a useful by-product. In this paper, the liquid phase oxidation of glycerol has been studied over gold nanoparticles supported on TiO 2 , and synthesized by using deposition-precipitation method. The catalysts are characterized by XRD, TEM, XPS, and activity towards CO oxidation. Active catalysts comprise particle size distributions (2-5 nm diameters) for gold nanoparticles. The results indicate that the Au/TiO 2 catalyst showed the best performances both for activity and selectivity toward glyceric acid. We have also studied the effect of reaction conditions such as, amount of catalyst and concentration of base in the catalytic activity.