International Conference on Mechanical, Industrial and Materials Engineering 2015 (ICMIME2015) 11-13 December, 2015, RUET, Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Paper ID: ET-029 Evaluation of Biodiesel from Rice Bran Oil as a Fuel for Automotive Applications Abu Naushad Parvez and Sobahan Mia* Department of Mechanical Engineering, KUET, Khulna, Bangladesh *E-mail: smia@me.kuet.ac.bd, Abstract Due to increased environmental pollution and gradual depletion of the fossil fuels, it becomes necessary to develop viable alternative fuels from renewable sources for industrial as well as automotive applications. Vegetable oils seem to be a potential alternative fuel but because of some detrimental properties like high viscosity and low volatility, it causes several problems during their long duration usage in diesel (CI) engines. The most commonly used method to make vegetable oil suitable for use in diesel engines is to convert it into biodiesel i.e. vegetable oil esters using transesterification process. Rice Bran oil is an underutilized, edible vegetable oil, which is available in large quantities in rice cultivating countries and very little research on it, has been done to utilize this oil as a proper substitute to mineral diesel fuel. In this work, the transesterification process for the production of rice bran oil methyl ester has been investigated. The optimum conditions to achieve maximum yield of biodiesel has been investigated at different catalyst weight % of oil and with different molar ratio of Rice Bran oil and methanol. The most expected result has been investigated at 6:1 molar ratio of methanol and Rice Bran oil at the reaction temperature 60°C, 1h heating and stirring time, and for 1% (w/w) catalyst for high biodiesel production rate. The fuel properties, economic analysis and comparison with other edible and non-edible sources showed that the biodiesel from rice bran oil has comparable properties to substitute mineral diesel fuel in CI engines, hence, rice bran oil methyl ester can be recommended as mineral diesel fuel substitute for diesel engines especially in automotive engines. Keywords: Biodiesel, Rice Bran oil, Transesterification, Catalyst. 1. Introduction During the past decades worldwide petroleum consumption has permanently increased due to rapid growth of human population and industrialization, which has caused depletion of the fossil fuel reserves and increased their prize. On the other hand, combustion of the petroleum fuels emits greenhouse gases and contributes to environmental pollution and global warming [1]. Since most of the road vehicles are utterly dependent on these fossil fuels, thus there has been happening a severe instability of the environment and climate of the whole planet. Therefore, there is a great awareness in diesel fuel substitution with a clean, renewable fuel such as biodiesel. It facilitates 75% cleaner burning phenomena than diesel fuel, reduces the CO emission by 48%, particulate matter emission by 47%, and ozone formation probability by 67% [2]. It can be made from vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled restaurant greases. Out of these, rice bran oil is one of the most promising alternative fuels for diesel engine. It is a non conventional, inexpensive and low grade vegetable oil. Its acid value, FFA content and saponification value dignifies its approbation in biodiesel production [3]. Though various works had been pursued on biodiesel but most of them are on elementary analysis of different parts of the biodiesel production. But, many of them lacks the clarification of the RBO biodiesel usability as a fuel in automotive applications considering its overall production feasibility, fuel characteristics compared to diesel and economic perspective. So, the main purpose of this work is to produce biodiesel in an economical and effective way, to investigate the fuel properties of biodiesel from RBO, to compare it with the conventional Diesel fuel, make a standard comparison of different biodiesels made from variety of oil and finally proposes RBO biodiesel prospective as a fuel in automotive vehicles with respect of its characteristics and financial consideration. 2. Methodology 2.1 Transesterification Process