BACKGROUND: With the development of bio-diesel, it has become an urgent task to make full use of glycerol, which is a by-product of the production of bio-diesel. Glycerol triacetate (GTA) is one of the important derivatives of glycerol and can be used in many fields. Usually it is prepared industrially in the presence of mineral acidic catalysts. The shortcomings of such a process include serious environmental issues, complicated technique and no recyclability of catalyst. Recently, it was reported that many acidic functionalized ionic liquids (FILs) could be synthesized and used in esterifications with excellent catalytic performance. Hence, the esterification of glycerol with acetic acid to produce GTA was investigated using acidic FILs as catalyst. RESULTS: The results indicated that [HSO3-PMim][HSO4] exhibited promising catalytic performance. Using [HSO3-PMiM][HSO4] as catalyst, the yield of GTA was above 95%. The catalyst was utilized ten times and the GTA yield remained above 91%. CONCLUSION: The good catalytic performance and reusability of this FIL may contribute to the development of an environmentally friendly strategy for the synthesis of GTA. (C) 2009 Society of Chemical Industry