Synthesis of Methyl Ester from Rice Bran Oil through the Esterification Reaction

Vegetable oil is one of rice bran components. As triglycerides, vegetable oil can be converted to fatty acid and alkyl esters for further treatments. Synthesis of alkyl ester oil can be carried out by esterification or transesterification reaction, depending on the quality of the oil and the catalyst. The purposes of this study are 1) Rice bran oil isolation, 2) Oil esterification 3) Characterization and identification of the methyl ester that compose rice bran oil. The stages in this research are 1) Extraction of rice bran oil, 2) Synthesis of methyl ester from rice bran through esterification reaction, 3) Methyl ester characterization of rice bran oil and its potential test as biodiesel included determination of density, viscosity, refractive index, and acid number test, 4) The identification of synthesized methyl esters composition using GC-MS. The results showed that rice bran oil has a yield of 18.09%. Synthesis of methyl esters from rice bran oil through the esterification reaction with a catalyst acid yields 72.37%. The characters of the synthesized methyl ester are on the range of biodiesel quality standards, namely, the density is 0.850 g/mL, viscosity is 4.73 cSt, a refractive index is 1.45871, and an acid number is 0.76 g KOH/g methyl ester, therefore it is claimed that the synthesized methyl esters have the potential as biodiesel. The GC-MS result showed the presence of compounds methyl tetradecanoate (0.38%), methyl hexadecanoate (40.67%), methyl 9-octadecenoate (53.68%), methyl octadecanoate (5.02%), and methyl eicosanoate (0.14%).