Giacomo Marco Lari

Glycerol conversion into chemicals and fuel additives is pursued to valorise a burgeoning byproduct in the bioenergy sector. To this aim, heterogeneous catalysts have been developed that enable, in many cases, efficient and green transformations. Still, the evaluation of the environmental and economic footprint that would be associated with their large-scale application has often been neglected, limiting their commercial attractiveness.

Commercial two-step processes to convert glycerol into epichlorohydrin are more benign compared to the predominant industrial route starting from propene in terms of materials requirements and CO2 emissions. Still, the use of alkali hydroxides in stoichiometric amounts in the second reaction, i.e., the dehydrochlorination of the dichloropropanol intermediate, leads to the formation of large amounts of salt wastes, thus limiting the greenness of the technology.

The availability of a heterogeneous catalyst, which contains cheap and abundant elements, has a scalable synthesis, is highly active and stable, retains its performance upon shaping into a technical form and can be operated in continuous mode, would pave the way for a more ecological and economical production of glycerol carbonate from glycerol and urea. Here, we show that a mixed oxide of Mg and Al is a promising active phase for this reaction.