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Challenges & Opportunities on Catalytic Conversion of Glycerol to Value Added Chemicals. BULLETIN OF CHEMICAL REACTION ENGINEERING & CATALYSIS 2021. [DOI: 10.9767/bcrec.16.3.10524.525-547] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
With the rapid expansion of biodiesel industry, its main by-product, crude glycerol, is anticipated to reach a global production of 6 million tons in 2025. It is actually a worrying phenomenon as glycerol could potentially emerge as an excessive product with little value. Glycerol, an alcohol and oxygenated chemical from biodiesel production, has essentially enormous potential to be converted into higher value-added chemicals. Using glycerol as a starting material for value-added chemical production will create a new demand on the glycerol market such as lactic acid, propylene glycol, alkyl lactatehydrogen, olefins and others. This paper briefly reviews the recent development on value-added chemicals derived from glycerol through catalytic conversion of refined and crude glycerol that have been proven to be promising in research stage with commercialization potential, or have been put in a corporate marketable production. Despite of the huge potential of products that can be transformed from glycerol, there are still numerous challenges to be addressed and discussed that include catalyst design and robustness; focus on crude or refined glycerol; reactor technology, reaction mechanism and thermodynamic analysis; and overall process commercial viability. The discussion will hopefully provide new insights on justified direction to focus on for glycerol transformation technology. Copyright © 2021 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0).
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Comparative study of catalytic conversion of glycerol, a by-product of transesterification, to cyclic hydrocarbons using MCM-22, ZSM-5 and alumina. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL REACTOR ENGINEERING 2021. [DOI: 10.1515/ijcre-2021-0102] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
Abstract
Recently chemical consumption has increased due to the growth of human population and industrialization. Depleting fuel reserves and increase in chemicals rise has led and researcher to focus on alternative bio based chemicals. Glycerol which is produced as a major byproduct from the trans-esterification reaction of fatty acids for producing biodiesel has been used in this work for conversion to value added products. Conversion of glycerol in presence of alumina, MCM-22 (pure silica based mesoporous catalyst) and ZSM-5 (Si-Al based catalyst) is investigated at different temperature and catalyst weight in a fixed bed reactor. The conversion of glycerol was found to be maximum in presence of alumina whereas maximum liquid products were obtained with ZSM-5. GC/MS analysis confirmed the production of Furan compounds in higher fraction with both alumina as well as ZSM-5 showing the importance of acid sites for the glycerol conversion to higher hydrocarbons. The GC/MS analysis of liquid product obtained in presence of catalyst was also observed with high area% of unconverted glycerol. The order is as follow 54% (MCM-22) > 44% (ZSM-5) > 42.2% (Alumina). For the investigation of the conversion for varying catalyst weight (0–3 g with 0.5 g weight difference), reaction temperature were varied between 450 and 550 °C. Different values of n = 0, 1, 2 etc. were used for the fitting of the respective plot. A change in reaction rate and the rate constant indicated that with the change of temperature, reaction rate was increased. The rate constant value obtained between 0.09 and 0.12 h−1. In all cases 450 °C and catalyst weight of 2.5 g was obtained as optimum for higher liquid yield. TGA analysis of spent catalyst also showed that alumina give high yield (∼50% by weight) of coke as compared to ZSM-5 and MCM-22.
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