The Preparation Of Fatty Acid Methyl Ester And Application As Green Solvent In Oil-water Emulsion Formation

Crude rice bran oil (RBO) is a low-cost feedstock for fatty acid methyl ester(FAME) production, and FAME could be used as green solvent in many fields. In thispaper, we describe an optimization study on the production of FAME from crudeRBO by two-step catalytic conversion process and use this FAME to replacemethylbenzene to make emulsion for pesticide formulation. RBO with high free fattyacid content was converted to FAME by acid-catalyzed esterification and alkalinetransesterification. This study was based on two groups of sixteen well-planedorthogonal experiments. According to the results of range analysis and analysis ofvariance, the esterification rate achieved91.41%by using2.0%sulfuric acid ascatalyst with a oil-to-methanol molar ratio of1:12, temperature at64oC, and reactiontime of3.5h. The transesterification rate reached98.71%under the30wt.%methanol and1.00wt.%catalyst at60oC for2.0h. The FAME was used as greensolvent to make emulsion in water, and we investigated the stability properties anddroplet sizes, comparing with emulsion applying methylbenzene as solvent. Finally, aseries of stable emulsion had been got when9.0%of the mixture of Tween-80andSpan-80was used as mixing surfactant and20%of FAME was green solvent.