Oxidative dehydration reaction of glycerol into acrylic acid: a first-principles prediction of structural and thermodynamic parameters of a bifunctional catalyst

Abstract

The production of biodiesel generates crude glycerol as a byproduct. The search for glycerol conversion routes has attracted the attention of researchers and thus, this work evaluated the properties of the catalysts T-Nb2O5 and T-Nb2O5/V treated with H2O2 applied to the reaction of oxidative dehydration of glycerol. The peroxo groups from the treatment with H2O2 had a greater oxidation capacity in relation to those in the pure catalyst. Furthermore, the catalyst doped with vanadium presented lower energy costs during the process. Those results might be helpful for designing new catalysts for the production of strategic chemical products from glycerol.