Rice bran oil, not being a seed‐derived oil, has a composition qualitatively different from common vegetable oils and the conventional vegetable oil processing technologies are not adaptable without incurring huge losses. The oil's unusual high content of waxes, free fatty acids, unsaponifiable constituents, phospholipids, glycolipids and its dark color, all cause difficulties in the refining process. An attempt was made in this investigation to look into factors that are responsible for such difficulties and to develop suitable methodologies for physical refining of rice bran oil. Special attention was given to dewaxing, degumming and deacidification steps. The high content of glycolipids (∼6%) present in the oil was found to be a central problem and their removal appeared crucial for successful processing of the oil. We have also isolated and identified, for the first time, phosphorus‐containing glycolipids that are unique to this oil. These compounds prevent a successful degumming of the oil and their high surface activity leads to unusually high refining losses during alkali refining. A number of simple processes has been evolved, including 1) a simultaneous dewaxing and degumming process, 2) an unusual enzymatic process to degum the oil, 3) processes for the removal of the glycolipids including the phosphoglycolipids and 4) a process for the isolation of the glycolipids which may have potential applications in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. The processing protocol suggested here becomes the first and only one to produce an oil with less than 5 ppm of phosphorus from crude rice bran oil, rendering it thus suitable for physical refining. We believe that the present results are very significant and should contribute to a better utilization of this valuable oil.
Kinetic studies have been carried out on the esterification of free fatty acids (FFAs) in jatropha oil with methanol in the presence of sulphuric acid catalyst at 5 and 10 wt% concentrations relative to free fatty acids (0.4–0.8 wt% relative to oil) and methanol–FFA mole ratios ranging from 20:1 to 80:1. It has been found that a 60:1 methanol–FFA mole ratio and 5 wt% catalyst at 60°C and 500 rpm or above provided a final acid value lower than 1 mg KOH/g oil within 60 min. A kinetic model has been proposed with second‐order kinetics for both the forward and backward reactions. The effect of temperature on the reaction rate constants and equilibrium constant has been determined using Arrhenius and von't Hoff equations, respectively. The heat of reaction was found to be −11.102 kJ/mol.
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