Catalytic Synthesis of Glycerol tert-Butyl Ethers as Fuel Additives from the Biodiesel By-Product Glycerol

Glycerol is a major by-product in the biodiesel production process. Every 100 kg of biodiesel produced generates approximately 10 kg of crude glycerol. As the biodiesel industry has expanded rapidly in recent years, finding new uses of the excess crude glycerol is important. Many studies have examined alternative uses of crude glycerol. One of them is the use of glycerol derivatives, such as glycerol tert-butyl ethers as fuel additives. In this paper, the etherification kinetics of glycerol with tert-butyl alcohol to glycerol tert-butyl ethers was studied using an Amberlyst catalyst. The influences of the catalyst type and loading, reaction time, molar ratio, and temperature were investigated in detail.