Glycerol is a major by-product of bio-diesel production and hence its utilization has been an area of high interest in the scientific community. Oxidizing glycerol to high-value products can improve the economics of bio-diesel production. In the present work, we study glycerol oxidation in alkaline medium using an activated carbon supported Palladium catalyst. Kinetic studies have been performed in a batch reactor to study the effect of different parameters such as NaOH concentration, temperature, and pressure. Our results point to product inhibition by adsorbing reactant and product species. We also observe a relative insensitivity of product yields at a given conversion, to the temperature. Our observations further suggest that higher NaOH concentration gives better C3 selectivity while higher oxygen pressure results in lower C3 selectivity. Based on our own studies and the literature available, the most likely kinetic pathway and a kinetic model have been proposed. Our results suggest the possibility that C–C cleavage occurs directly from the primary intermediate aldehydic species, as a result of which, carbon chain scission products (including CO₂) form from very early stages of the reaction. Various strategies such as pooling temperature data to estimate rate ratios prior to full parameter estimation, use of statistical significance tests to reduce model parameters etc have been used to arrive at a minimalistic model still capable of explaining all features of the oxidation. Confidence bounds on the model parameters have been estimated.