Glycerine

About This Product

Glycerine, also written glycerol, is a three-carbon alcohol carrying a hydroxyl group on each carbon, formula C3H8O3, with CAS number 56-81-5 and the INCI name Glycerin. It is not manufactured for its own sake but recovered: every triglyceride split by saponification, hydrolysis or transesterification releases glycerine as a co-product, which is why the world supply is tied to soap and biodiesel output rather than to glycerine demand.

Three hydroxyl groups on a small molecule explain almost all of its behaviour. They hydrogen-bond readily, which makes glycerine fully miscible with water, viscous and strongly hygroscopic, drawing moisture from the air and holding it. That water-binding is the basis of its use as a humectant in skin care, in foods to keep products soft, and in tobacco and pharmaceuticals. The same hydroxyl groups make it a reactive building block, esterifying to form alkyd resins, polyether polyols and nitroglycerin. It is traded as crude glycerine at roughly 80 percent purity, technical grade, and refined grade at 99.5 percent or better meeting USP and EP monographs.

It is used in personal care and cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, tobacco, alkyd resins and polyurethanes, antifreeze and industrial fluids.

Bio Green Oleo supplies crude, technical and refined glycerine to specification on glycerol content, moisture, ash, MONG, colour, chlorides and heavy metals.