Abstract
Glycerol is a cheap, non-toxic, and renewable by-product of the rapid expansionof biodiesel and soap producers around the world. Glycerol electroforming is amethod of oxidizing glycerol into valuable chemicals of interest to the pharma-ceutical, cosmetics, polymer, and food industries. One of the technologies thathave been studied over the past decades is to couple glycerol oxidation withthe production of pure hydrogen in an electrolysis cell (so-called electrolyzer),which has shown the advantage of consuming a much lower theoretical amountof electricity than conventional water electrolysis. The efficiency of this deviceis influenced by the nature, structure, and composition of the electrode mate-rial. This mini-review concerns the understanding of glycerol electro-oxidation,a brief state of the art of nanomaterials currently used to prepare electrode mate-rials, and some results concerning the performance of electrolyzers in alkalineconditions that combine the efficient production of value-added chemicals andhydrogen.