Glycerol as a sustainable solvent for green chemistry

Abstract

Glycerol, an organic waste generated by the biodiesel industry, has been recently proposed as a valuable green solvent. This review summarizes the advantages, disadvantages and potential uses of glycerol as a green solvent for catalysis, organic synthesis, separations and materials chemistry. In particular, through selected examples we show here that glycerol may combine the advantages of water (low toxicity, low price, large availability, renewability) and ionic liquids (high boiling point, low vapour pressure, low solubility in scCO₂). More generally, all these reported works contribute to increase the portfolio of available green solvents and afford innovative solutions to the substitution of the conventionally used volatile organic solvents.