The refinement of renewable resources: New important derivatives of fatty acids and glycerol

During the last years, the industrial significance of renewable resources has highly increased. The ever‐growing use of fossil resources for energy consumption, polymers, fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals and the therefore steadily increasing price favour the substitution of oil and gas by renewable resources. Here, especially products of catalytic functionalisations of vegetable fats and oils such as rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, palm oil or coconut oil play a decisive role. The present article gives a survey of several important catalytic functionalisations of fatty compounds and glycerol resulting in new attractive products. With their emerging properties, they could find a rapid introduction into the chemical market. Particularly the functionalisations via heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis, like additions, reductions, oxidations and metathesis reactions, will be presented.