New pathways for transformations of glycerol and its derivatives to higher value-added chemicals

Abstract

The increasing biodiesel production that took place in the last twenty years led to an enormous surplus of glycerol, the major by-product of this manufacturing. As a result of that, glycerol price plummeted while the scientific community began to look for its potential uses. In fact, glycerol can be used as a primary chemical renewable building block for a large family of commodity chemicals. Amongst many other pathways for the production of high value-added chemicals, previous works of our research group investigated the synthesis of functionalized cyclic acetals of glycerol and the use of non-toxic dialkyl carbonates to achieve the carboxylation and alkylation of glycerol derivatives. This thesis work focused on the selective deprotection of functionalized cyclic acetals using different heterogeneous acid catalyst. On the other hand, we studied the synthesis of glycerol carbonate and glycerol dicarbonate via direct carboxylation and alkylation of glycerol with dimethylcarbonate, comparing the reactions carried out in thermal and catalytic conditions.