Oxidation of Glycerol

Glycerol can be oxidized to produce fine and specialty chemicals. Traditionally, oxidation can be conducted by mineral acids, enzymatic, or electron-chemical processes but selective catalytic oxidation turns to be productive, cheaper, and environmental friendly.

Oxidation products are useful as intermediates. e.g. glyceric acid is an intermediate for medicine manufacture; dihydroxyactone is a self-tanning agent in cosmostics; tartronic acid is an chelating agent; hydroxypyruvic acid is used for fruit maturation and intermediate for amino acids;Mesoxalic acid has potential application in organic syntheses.

Most of recent studies focus on heterogeneous catalysts such as supported platinum or palladium, and gold etc while some on homogeneous catalyst such as TEMPO (2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl).

The oxidation ususlly use air or oxygen as an oxidant at mild temperature (20-80 C) in the liquid pahse. The pH has an important impact on catalyst performance, product coversion rate and selectivity.