Potential applications of crude glycerol in polymer technology–Current state and perspectives

The increasing use of bio-based fuels and fuel additives, among them biodiesel, causes significant surplus of crude glycerol on the market which creates new challenges in terms of its sustainable utilization. A lot of ways for the incorporation of this by-product into different branches of industry requires purification by expensive and complicated processes. Therefore, researchers are seeking for applications of untreated crude glycerol. Among the possibilities, much attention is drawn to the polymer chemistry and technology. This branch of industry is one of the biggest consumers of glycerol after food, pharmaceutical and personal care applications sectors, and probably the biggest one that does not require complicated purification of glycerol resulting from biodiesel technology. Crude glycerol can be applied in the number of processes such as fermentation, oxidation, esterification and transesterification, biomass liquefaction, oligomerization and polymerization, carboxylation, glycerolysis, hydrogenolysis, dehydration or dihydroxylation. This paper summarizes the use of glycerol in polymer technology and the attempts of crude glycerol incorporation into this field reported in literature.