TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - INORGANIC CHEMISTRY - Preferred Components: The salt is: sodium chloride/potassium chloride, the recovered acid solution is a hydrochloric acid solution and the base product is a sodium hydroxide solution/potassium hydroxide.The sodium hydroxide solution is used as feedstock for production of sodium methoxide or sodium ethoxide.The homogeneous catalyst is a recovered acid solution, a recovered dewatered acid catalyst and/or a recovered base catalyst. The chelating resin removes calcium and magnesium impurities. In the process for recovering and reusing a base catalyst, the salt is sodium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium sulfate and/or potassium sulfate; and the acid is hydrochloric acid and the base is sodium hydroxide and/or potassium hydroxide.    TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - ORGANIC CHEMISTRY - Preferred Process: The process further comprises: removing volatile components present in the glycerol solution; and contacting the recovered acid solution with a glycerol-rich process stream.The recovered acid solution is recovered by treatment in a water-splitting cell.The process for recovering and reusing a base catalyst further comprises: contacting the glycerol-rich process stream and/or the defatted glycerol-rich process stream, with carbon or a decolorizing resin; contacting the aqueous solution comprising the salt with a chelating resin; and contacting the glycerol-rich process stream and/or the defatted glycerol-rich process stream, with a coalescer membrane. The conversion of the salt results in 40-85% of the salt being converted to the salt's acid and base components.Preferred Components: The volatile components are methanol, ethanol, water, fatty acid methyl esters or fatty acid ethyl esters. The glycerol-rich process stream is 20-80 wt.% of glycerol.    TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - POLYMERS - Preferred Components: The resin is Optipore SD-2 (RTM: Polymeric adsorbent resin), Mitsubishi DCA11 (RTM: Styrene porous weakly basic anion exchange resin) or Amberlite IRC-747 (RTM: Ion-exchange resin). EXAMPLE - Glycerol-rich phase containing glycerol, methanol, and fatty acid soaps resulting from this process was treated by evaporation of methanol, then by injecting hydrochloric acid and passing the mixture through a static mixer to a mixing tank. The acid was allowed to neutralize (acidify) the fatty acid soaps in the glycerol-rich phase, forming sodium chloride salt and free fatty acids, and the mixture was fluidly transferred to a settling chamber. Free fatty acids resulting from the neutralization step were separated by decanting, and a defatted glycerol-rich phase containing glycerol (80-85 wt.%) and sodium chloride (2.5 wt.%) was obtained. A quantity of defatted glycerol-rich phase was diluted with water to glycerol (50 wt.%). Seven liters of diluted defatted glycerol-rich phase was placed in the tank supplying the diluting compartments (D) of the electrodialysis (ED) unit. Four liters of water containing a small amount of sodium chloride salt was placed in the tank supplying the concentrate compartments (C) of the ED unit, and four liters of an approximately 1.5 wt.% of sodium sulfate solution was placed in the tank supplying the electrode rinse compartments of the ED unit. The circulating pumps were turned on and the total flow to each of the loops was set at about 5 liters/minute. Electrodialysis of the defatted glycerol-rich process stream was carried out by activating direct current power and setting the current at 10A, representing a current density of approximately 20 mA/cm2. The total voltage across the ED unit was 10.1V at the start of the experiment. In this manner, desalting of defatted glycerol-rich solution was carried out for about forty minutes, generating a recovered salt solution (stream) and a desalted glycerol solution (stream). As the desalting operation progressed the voltage continued to increase until a set control value of 40V was reached. At that point the voltage was kept constant and the current was allowed to fall. When the current input reached about 1.5A (3 mA/cm 2 current density) the process was stopped. Electrodialysis of the defatted glycerol-rich stream through the ED unit in this manner yielded a desalted glycerol stream from which 99.3% of the salt had been removed. The recovered salt solution contained 44 gm/l of sodium chloride. The concentration of glycerol in the recovered salt solution was 12.3 gm/l. The amount of glycerol lost to the recovered salt solution was calculated to be approximately 1.8% of the amount in the defatted glycerol-rich phase feed.