Boreskov Institute of Catalysis SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia

KN-8VALUE ADDED CHEMICALS FROM GLYCEROL: SYNTHESISOF GLYCEROL CARBONATES USING SOLID BASE CATALYSTSN. Lingaiah, K. Jagadeeswaraiah, M. Balaraju and P.S. Sai PrasadCatalysis Laboratory, I&PC Division,Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad-500607, IndiaIn recent time, synthesis of biodiesel by transesterification of vegetable oils andfats is identified as one of the important conversion process of renewable feedstock.Glycerol is the by-product in biodiesel synthesis and identified as one of the top tenbuilding blocks in the bio refinery feed stocks. Conversion of glycerol into valuablechemicals by green catalytic process is a challenging area of research [1]. Glycerol isa synthesis intermediate for the preparation of a large number of compounds viahydrogenolysis, oxidation, etherification, esterification, transesterification andpolymerisation, etc [2]. One important glycerol derivative is glycerol carbonate, whichis widely used as protic solvent, additive and also as chemical intermediate.Glycerol carbonates can be prepared by reacting glycerol with CO 2 or urea andalso by dimethyl carbonate [3]. Transesterification reaction is one of the simplestmethod for producing glycerol carbonate from glycerol and dimethyl carbonate. Thepreparation of glycerol carbonate by transesterification of glycerol with dimethylcarbonate has added advantages due to easy separation of products. In the presentwork. transesterification of glycerol with dimethyl carbonate was carried over a seriesof Mg-Al-La based trimetallic base oxides. The mixed metal oxides were prepared byvarying molar ratios of constituent metal oxides. The effect of catalyst treatment andtheir molar ratios are explored. The activity of the catalysts will be discussed basedon the changes in the composition of the catalysts. The catalytic activities arecorrelated with the observed structural and surface characteristics of the catalysts.The role of basicity of the catalysts was evaluated for the transesterification ofglycerol.References:[1]. R.D. Cortright, R.R. Davda, J.A. Dumesic, Nature 418 (2002) 964.[2]. Y. Zheng, X. Chen, Y. Shen, Chem. Rev. 108 (2008) 5253.[3]. Maria J. Climent, Avelino Corma, Pilar De Frutos, Sara Iborra, Maria Noy, Alexandra VeltyandPatricia Concepción, J. Catal. 269 (2010) 140.22