This work describes a catalytic oxidation of glycerol using citrate-stabilized gold nanoparticles (citrate-AuNPs) having a mean diameter of 22 +/- A 3 nm. A careful product analysis was performed by mean of high-performance liquid chromatography, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Effects of reaction temperature, oxygen pressure, catalyst and reactant concentration, and NaOH/glycerol molar ratio on glycerol conversion, and product yields were investigated. The glycerol conversion and glyceric acid yield were optimum when the oxidation was performed using 0.6 M glycerol and NaOH at 80 A degrees C under 3 bar of O-2 pressure in the presence of 50 ppm citrate-AuNPs catalyst for 3 h.