The direct conversion of glycerol to propanediols offers a cost-effective approach to integrate biodiesel into current chemical production roadmaps. However, current catalytic transformation approaches are plagued by uncontrolled selectivity towards propanediols. Meanwhile, improvements focused on increasing loading and/or hydrogen pressure pose economic and safety concerns, which limits commercial scalability. We report that heteropoly acid modified platinum-titanium dioxide catalysts enable the conversion of glycerol to propanediols at a record low hydrogen pressure of 0.5 MPa H2. Compared with platinum-titanium dioxide catalysts, the addition of heteropoly acid enhances the catalytic performance in terms of turnover-frequency of glycerol and space-time yield to 1,3-propanediol. Characterizations confirmed heteropoly acids contributed to the changes of surface properties, specifically, an increase in the average strength of surface acid sites and the formation of stronger interactions between platinum and the titanium dioxide support. Our findings present an alternative direction to integrate bio-mass valorization into carbon neutralization.
