Conversion of Glycerol to Propanediol and Acrolein by Heterogeneous Catalysis

Consequence of an important increase in world biodiesel production, in the last decade the level of glyceroloffered on the market exceeded the consumption rate. Beside its classical utilizations, particularly inpharmaceutical and food industries, glycerol emerges as an important renewable chemical that can betransformed into medium tonnage chemical products, replacing petroleum based intermediates. An importantcategory of processes for glycerol conversion into value added chemicals are based on heterogeneouscatalysis. This paper reviews the main research works investigating the glycerol transformation into twochemical products of industrial importance: propanediols and acrolein. Even if, on short term, these researchesdo not have an obvious economical impact, they certainly present an important potential for the future, whennew feedstocks and processes will have to replace actual petroleum based products and technologies.Keywords: hydrogenolysis, dehydration, propanediols, acrolein, solid catalysts