Glycerol dissolves organic compounds those insoluble in water due to hydrogen bonding. Other polyhydroxy alcohols are potential for this due to same reason.
Dear Saied, thank you for sharing this interesting technical question with other RG members. Glycerol is a highly polar solvent like DMF or DMSO. According to the link cited below glycerol can dissolve inorganic salts, acids and bases, but also enzymes and transition metal complexes because it easily forms hydrogen bonds with these materials in solution. As mentioned in your question, glycerol can also dissolve organic compounds which are poorly miscible with water. further advantages of glycerol are that it is non-toxic, biodegradable and recyclable. For a good overview about this topic please have a look at the following interesting review article:
Glycerol as a green solvent for high product yields and selectivities
Article Glycerol as a green solvent for high product yields and selectivities
This article is freely available as public full text on RG. Thus you can download it as pdf file.
Personally I would hesitate to choose glycerol as a solvent, because it has such a high boiling point (290 °C under normal pressure). This means that it can be very difficult to remove residual glycerol form an isolated product.
Good luck with your work and best wishes, Frank Edelmann
Now, very cheap clycerol is produced as a co-product in biodiesel industry. However, the purification of such glycerol is expensive to use it as a solvent. An extremely high viscosity makes its application very questionable.
Thank you all, for your nice guidelines.
In reply to dear Madhukar Baburao Deshmukh:
Many polyhydroxy alcohols are capable than glycerol in hydrogen bonding. Nevertheless, they can't promote many reactions as well as glycerol. What other factors are involved?
In reply to dear Frank T. Edelmann and Yurii V Geletii:
Despite high viscosity and high boiling point, glycerol can be used in a reusable promoting medium for organic synthesis. Glycerol and other polyhydroxy alcohols are simply removed by extraction. Many hydrophobic solvents, such as ethers and hydrocarbons, are immiscible in glycerol or other polyhydroxy alcohols. This enables the reaction products to be removed by simple liquid-liquid phase extraction. However, it may not be economically at large scales.
Green solvents for organic transformation :
1. water
2.Ethylene glycol
3.Ethylene glycol mono methyl ether
4.Polyethylene glycol
Green solvents for organic transformation :
1. water
2. ethanol
3. Ethylene glycol
4. Glycerol
Dear all, among the large family of polyethylene glycols (PEG), PEG-400 has a special 'magic' place as a reaction medium (400 is the MW). Please have a look at the following documents. My Regards
https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules181113139
https://doi.org/10.1002/ejoc.202000467
https://doi.org/10.1039/D1GC01617B
https://doi.org/10.1080/23312009.2015.1049932
Dear Saied,
Due to its ability to form hydrogen bonding and being an organic solvent, Glycerol can dissolve many organic compounds that are poorly miscible in water. The other polyhydroxy alcohols also have good potential for hydrogen bonding and can promote organic conversions well.
A lot of quaternary ammonium salts are employed as ionic liquids for the synthesis of organic compounds . These compounds are reusable and can be considered as green solvents .We have synthesized and employed these compounds even for the synthesis of polycyclic compounds such as steroids. Due to high viscosity of glycerol the number of organic reactions performed in this medium is limited.
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