abiosus e.V. Conferences

Synthesis and evaluation of value added products from Glycerol

Abstract submitted to "2nd Workshop on Fats and Oils as Renewable Feedstock for the Chemical Industry "
Synthesis and evaluation of value added products from Glycerol
Avinash Bhadani
Sukhprit Singh
Keywords: Glycerol, glycerol monoethers, cationic surfactants, surface properties, biological properties
Presentation preference: poster

The use of renewable feedstock like Glycerol for producing important industrial chemicals having bulk demand is the priority of 21st century. Glycerol is an important by product of biodiesel manufacturing which is produced by transesterfication during the production of biodiesel fuel. Approximatly 10 kg of glycerol is produced for every 100 kg of oil taken for production of biodiesel. With the total production of biodiesel in thousands of tons, huge amount of glycerol is also produced as a by product. 1 It has been estimated that by 2010 the overall production of glycerol will touch 1.2 million tons. The cost of B100 type biodiesel can be reduced from US$ 0.63 to US$ 0.35 provided the use of glycerol is enhanced for the production of value added products.2 In spite of green origin and over production the scientific community had not been able to fully explore potential usefulness of this naturally occurring molecule for making value added products.
Recently our research group reported synthesis of β-Bromo Glycerol Monoethers directly from α-Olefins by cohalogenation protocol.3 With the continuation of our work we have developed glycerol based pyridinium surfactants and compared its properties with some commercially available surfactants. We found better surface and biological properties such as low cytotoxicity towards animal cell line and better DNA binding capability of new glycerol based cationic surfactants. As the production of cationic surfactants amounts to 350000-500000 tones per annum.4 The replacement of commercially available cationic surfactants with new glycerol based surfactants will check loss of energy and resources due to over production of glycerol.
Literature
1. Pagliaro, M.; Rossi, M. The Future of Glycerol. RSC Green Chemistry Book Series. 2008.
2. Zhou, Chun-Hui.; Beltramini, J. N.; Fan, Yong-Xian and Lu, G. Q. Chemoselective catalytic conversion of glycerol as a biorenewable source to value commodity chemicals. Chem. Soc. Rev. 2008, 37, 527-549.
3. Singh, S.; Bhadani, A.; Kamboj, R. Synthesis of β-Bromo glycerol monoethers from α-olefins. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2008, 47, 8090-8094.
4. Gunstone, F.D.; Padley, F. B. Lipid Technologies and Application. CRC Press Book, 1997.