Development of continuous processes for aerobic glycerol oxidation

Due to the mature market and slow demand growth of refined glycerol, there are not enough financial incentives for refining whole crude glycerol from the biodiesel industry. New markets for glycerol can be created by developing processes that consume glycerol as their raw material, e.g. catalytic aerobic glycerol oxidation. On the one hand, very few studies elaborate the development of continuous glycerol oxidation processes. On the other hand, the study of the continuous system might give a better picture of the industrial application of this process. Therefore, besides giving a brief report on the batchwise catalytic aerobic glycerol process, this thesis describes the development of a continuous catalytic glycerol oxidation process, especially as a magnetic slurry-catalyst system.