Aim of this work is the investigation of the gold catalysed liquid-phase oxidation of polyalcohols with both, primary and secondary alcohol groups, in order to evaluate the potential of gold catalysts to oxidise a secondary alcohol group in presence of a primary group. For that purpose we investigated the heterogeneously catalysed liquid-phase oxidations of n-propanol, as reference for the oxidation of the primary alcohol group only, of propylene glycol, where the competitive reaction can be examined and finally of glycerol, which is the target reaction due to known economic aspects. We report on the performance of ceria supported gold catalysts in these reactions and discuss the results in dependency of the specific surface area of the support, the catalyst and support preparation method and the catalyst activation conditions. Finally, in order to estimate the relative activity and selectivity of the ceria supported catalysts we compared the catalytic results with the performance of carbon and titania supported gold catalysts. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.