Enzymatic production of rice bran biodiesel and testing of its diesel blends in a four-stroke CI engine

ABSTRACT

Due to the high prospective of rice bran oil, it can be used as a resource for biodiesel production. This study aims to produce high-quality rice bran biodiesel through enzymatic transesterification using lipase enzyme. The fuel properties are tested with standard protocols. Three explicit blends B20, B40, and B40 on v/v basis are prepared for the test purpose. With the CI engine test, the performance characteristics brake thermal efficiency and brake specific fuel consumption are arrived and compared with pure diesel. The emissions of CO, NO_x, and HC are also analyzed. Test outcomes uncovered that the blend with lower biodiesel content performed well in the engine with brought down CO, HC and NOx outflows. In any case, with the higher biodiesel concentrations, there was a significant increment in the emission range. By and large, b20 and b40 blend brought about improved performance with limited emissions and can be used in an unmodified diesel engine.

KEYWORDS:

• Rice bran oil
• enzyme catalyst
• transesterification
• biodiesel
• performance
• emission

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge that there are no external funding/grants received for this research work.