Open Access

Synthesis of Methyl Lactate from Glycerol Using Sn-Beta Zeolite

Wenjie Dong, Chenlu Wang, Minyan Gu, Long Yang, Zheng Shen^*, Yalei Zhang^*

State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, National Engineering Research Center of Facilities Agriculture, Key Laboratory of Yangtze River Water Environment of Ministry of Education, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China

* Corresponding authors: ;

Journal of Renewable Materials 2017, 5(Suppl.1), 22-30. https://doi.org/10.7569/JRM.2017.634126

Abstract

Lactic acid can not only be used to produce multiple chemicals, but can also be the building block for biodegradable and biocompatible polylactic acid identified as a renewable resource. As a by-product in biodiesel production, the glycerol yield increases with a rapid expansion of biodiesel. However, in the chemical and environmental fields it is still a great challenge to produce lactic acid or methyl lactate from glycerol. Herein, Sn-Beta zeolite was prepared through solid-state ion exchange (Sn-Beta SSIE) and was tested for base-free one-pot catalytic selective oxidation of glycerol into methyl lactate in methanol. The results showed that a maximum selectivity of up to 56.7% was achieved with a 36.8% conversion rate at 433 K within 4 h under an initial oxygen pressure of 0.1 MPa. In addition, the methyl lactate yield is not high because of its decomposition in the presence of oxygen. This study aims to contribute to the development of the polylactic acid industry.

---

Keywords

---