Oxidation of glycerol using gold–palladium alloy-supported nanocrystals

The use of bio-renewable resources for the generation of materials and chemicals continues to attract significant research attention. Glycerol, a by-product from biodiesel manufacture, is a highly functionalised renewable raw material, and in this paper the oxidation of glycerol in the presence of base using supported gold, palladium and gold–palladium alloys is described and discussed. Two supports, TiO2 and carbon, and two preparation methods, wet impregnation and sol-immobilisation, are compared and contrasted. For the monometallic catalysts prepared by impregnation similar activities are observed for Au and Pd, but the carbon-supported monometallic catalysts are more active than those on TiO2. Glycerate is the major product and lesser amounts of tartronate, glycolate, oxalate and formate are observed, suggesting a sequential oxidation pathway. Combining the gold and palladium as supported alloy nanocrystals leads to a significant enhancement in catalyst activity and the TiO2-supported catalysts are significantly more active for the impregnated catalysts. The use of a sol-immobilisation preparation method as compared to impregnation leads to the highest activity alloy catalysts and the origins of these activity trends are discussed.