Glycerol is abundantly produced by oleochemical and biodiesel industries and its industrial uses are rather limited. Polyglycerol is one of the potential products of industrial importance but it’s selective production through catalytic means often subjects to a few drawbacks. A novel heterogeneous catalyst was prepared by means of a co-precipitation method and its activity in selective glycerol etherification was demonstrated. Lanthanum (La):calcium (Ca) ratio, temperature, and the duration of calcination positively influenced the conversion of glycerol. A regression model was established to predict the effect of calcination conditions and La:Ca ratio on glycerol conversion. After 8 h of reaction, a conversion of 81.6 % was achieved under atmospheric pressure for at 250 °C, 3.5 wt. % of catalyst and with a La to Ca ratio of 1:2.7. The catalyst was subjected to a thermal treatment at 560 °C for 4.5 h. The catalyst characterization revealed well-mixed oxides with desirable properties such as sufficient porosity and surface area. It also showed that the formation of the O–Ca–O functional group sitting on the surface of the catalyst facilitated high glycerol conversion. The synthesized catalyst with excellent porosity and stability area was promising for glycerol etherification.

Professor Dr Ahmad Zuhairi Abdullah received his B. Tech (Hons), MSc, and PhD in 1995, 2000, and 2004, respectively. He was the Deputy Dean (Industry and Community Network) at School of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia between 2010-2012 and Deputy Dean (Research and Postgraduate Studies) between 2013-2018. He will also serve his deanship of the school in 2022-2024. He is registered as a Professional Technologist at Malaysian Board of Technologists (MBOT) and a Fellow Member of Institut Kimia Malaysia. His research works mostly involve the use of ordered porous catalytic materials in oleochemical reactions, renewable energy, waste treatment, and waste valorization. He has nearly 300 refereed publications in journals and book/book chapters mainly as the main author, and also involves as a technical committee member to nearly 150 international scientific conferences. He is often invited to share his research experiences in international conferences held in Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, The Philippines and China. In addition, he is an evaluator for research proposals from different agencies locally as well as from several international scientific bodies in the USA, Oman, Qatar, Kazakhstan, and Chile. He is also an expert panel of the Department of Environment Malaysia for the evaluation of Environmental Impact Assessment reports for various proposed projects related to petrochemical complexes, paper mills, metal smelting, chemical, lead-acid battery recycle plants, etc. He is one of the recipients of the Top Research Scientists Malaysia (TRSM) award in 2014 and listed in the List of World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University in 2020 and 2021. His h-index (Scopus) currently stands at 55 with about 10,000 citations.