Grant: Alliance Grants

With the increase in biodiesel production, glycerol, a by-product of this process, is now becoming a waste product by saturating the market. Nevertheless, glycerol can be transformed into a multitude of valuable products through different pathways and can then be valorized into high-value building blocks to be further transform into high-value chemicals. These high-value chemicals can then be used, for example, in fine chemistry, polymer chemistry or pharmaceutical chemistry, as well as commodity products. However, the market for niche chemicals can be volatile and variable. It is then proposed throughout this project to develop a tunable sustainable process for the transformation of glycerol into high-value derivatives able to produce different and various chemicals on demand. Furthermore, the feedstock can vary in terms of purity, and other biobased feedstock could become similarly challenging in the future. Therefore, the proposed process will be adaptative to be able to use various feedstocks and produce different end-products. The main challenges are then the control of the reaction pathways and the separation and purification of the obtained products without relying on fossil fuels to power the chemical transformations, to be sustainable and economically efficient. The proposed approach is the design of a multifunctional, safe and low-cost catalytic reaction photocatalytic system through a work in collaboration with Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Mexico.