Abstract: Glycerol carbonate was synthesized through the reaction of glycerol with urea using ZnSO4 as catalyst. The product glycerol carbonate was confirmed by IR and MS. The release of carbon dioxide from glycerol carbonate provides the target product glycidol under the catalysis of sodium phosphate. Several factors for the carbon dioxide release reaction were investigated，such as reaction time，temperature，pressure，type and dosage of catalysts etc. The appropriate reaction conditions were obtained from response surface methodology as：reaction time 4 h，reaction temperature 215 ℃，reaction pressure 2 kPa，amount of catalyst 2.5 %(mass ratio). After rotary evaporation，glycidol was analyzed with IR，HNMR and GC，and the yield of which was 83.8% as measured by GC.