Transesterification and fuel characterization of rice bran oil: A biorefinery path

Highest third worldwide production of the agricultural product namely rice causes a huge quantity of waste residues especially, rice bran concurrently with rice husk. It fabricates the residual wastes nearly of about 31.9 MMT annually throughout the world and owing to the thermal point of view they are not easily upgradable due to high silica content. Meanwhile, rice bran after extrusion in broilers have been used to extract oil containing free fatty acids (FFAs) (15–30%) such as cis–9–, & cis–12–octadecadienoic and cis–9, cis–12 & cis–15–octadecatrienoic oils. Rice bran fatty oil methyl esters are suitably converted into biodiesel for compression ignition (CI) engines via transesterification path in the presence of Ni/H₂ heterogeneous basic catalytical environment along with 4–methoxy–2–hydroxybenzalidene–p–toluidine promoter. Owing to significant viscous and volatile nature drawbacks of potential alternative first and second generation biofuels, there occur some troubles in their long application in CI engines could effectively minimized by such a catalytical pathway. The literature has been found a very little research on this oil as a potential substitute for petro–diesel. Finally, the produced rice bran based biodiesel was analyzed for its appropriateness as a fuel for CI engines. The outcomes explored the characteristics for the biodiesel extracted, under the most promising circumstances are resembling those of the petro–based fuels. The observed yields are high when compared to other enzymatic transesterification and homogeneous catalysis. In addition, in vitro microbial and antioxidant potentialities of RBOB were tested and compared with standard controls. Alternatively, low value by–products for the biodiesel industries like glycerol were also obtained and it gave oil suitable to feed the power generators.