Abstract
Biodiesel has been successfully commercialized in numerous countries. Glycerol, as a byproduct in biodiesel production plant, has been explored recently for fuel additive production. One of the most prospective fuel additives is solketal, which is produced from glycerol and acetone via an acetalization reaction. This manuscript reviewed recent progress on heterogeneous catalysts used in the exploratory stage of glycerol conversion to solketal. The effects of acidity strength, hydrophobicity, confinement effect, and others are discussed to find the most critical parameters to design better catalysts for solketal production. Among the heterogeneous catalysts, resins, hierarchical zeolites, mesoporous silica materials, and clays have been explored as effective catalysts for acetalization of glycerol. Challenges with each popular catalytic material are elaborated. Future works on glycerol to solketal will be improved by considering the stability of the catalysts in the presence of water as a byproduct. The presence of water and salt in the feed is certainly destructive to the activity and the stability of the catalysts.
Highlights
The exploration of renewable energy to supplement limited fossil fuels in the few years is one the most concerned research topics
This mini review paper aims to emphasize the potential exploration of catalytic materials for the conversion of glycerol to solketal by analyzing recent papers, especially open literature from after 2010
Diglycerol isomer was increased from 35% to 55% while the selectivity to aa isomer was decreased from 65% to 35%
Summary
The exploration of renewable energy to supplement limited fossil fuels in the few years is one the most concerned research topics. Numerous sources of abundant edible and potential non-edible oils have been identified [5] Regardless, this fact leads to increasing glycerol production as the byproduct of biodiesel conversion [2]. The conversion of glycerol into more valuable chemicals is the best option to create a new market for glycerol and improve the sustainability of biodiesel production [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14] This mini review paper aims to emphasize the potential exploration of catalytic materials for the conversion of glycerol to solketal by analyzing recent papers, especially open literature from after 2010. Other applications of solketal are in solvents, inks, pharmaceuticals, and paints [20]
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