ABSTRACT
The catalysis and the use of catalytic systems in numerous industrial processes is a field in constant development and meets the ninth principle of Green Chemistry. Although the catalysts are used in small amounts, many times the cost of their production is quite high, increasing the final expense of the global catalytic process. Therefore, there is a necessity of looking for alternative cheaper ways for productions of catalysts. In this sense, in the last twenty years, the synthesis of heterogeneous catalysts from waste materials derived from both industrial and biological sources has aroused a great interest and numerous studies have been reported (Balakrishnan et al. 2011; Bennett et al. 2016). The consumption of waste materials is quite advantageous because it contributes to the reduction of the economic and environmental costs associated with their disposal. Among these waste materials, biomass, referred to renewable organic materials derived from plants and animals than can serve and sources of energy, stands out as a source for the production of nanocatalysts, mainly materials based on carbon (Hu et al. 2010; Matthiesen et al. 2014; Balu et al. 2015; Deng et al. 2016; Jain et al. 2016; Hill 2017) and metal nanoparticles (Kharissova et al. 2013; Kou et al. 2013; Varma 2013; Varma 2016).
