title: Ohmic heating as a pre-treatment in solvent extraction of rice bran.
abstract: Rice bran, which is one of the major by products of paddy contain high quality proteins and edible oil apart from fibre, ash and NFE (nitrogen free extract). The existing solvent extraction method employs n-hexane as the most viable solvent for the extraction of oil from rice bran. But the high cost and scarce availability of n-hexane resulted in uneconomical extraction of rice bran oil. In this study, rice bran was ohmically heated for different time periods(1, 2 and 3 min) with different current values (5, 15 and 20 A) and with different concentration of sodium chloride (1 M, 0.1 M and 0.01 M) as conducting medium. The ohmically heated rice bran was subjected to extraction studies. Ohmic heating of rice bran of paddy varieties Red Triveni and Basmati reduced the extraction time by nearly 75 % and 70 % respectively and gave a maximum quantity of oil extracted when compared to bran, which was not ohmically heated. From the experiments with varying concentrations, residence time of ohmic heating and currents, it was found that ohmically heating the rice bran with 1 M sodium chloride solution and with a current value of 20 A for 3 min gave maximum oil extraction with minimum extraction time.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioresource Engineering, Macdonald Campus, Mcgill University, 21,111 Lakeshore road, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Canada H9X 3V9.
authors.forename: Gopu Raveendran
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Nair
authors.affiliation: Department of Post Harvest technology and Agriculture Processing, Kelappaji College of Engineering and Technology, Tavanur-679 573, Malapuram Dist., Kerala India.
authors.forename: V R
authors.initials: VR
authors.lastname: Divya
authors.affiliation: Department of Post Harvest technology and Agriculture Processing, Kelappaji College of Engineering and Technology, Tavanur-679 573, Malapuram Dist., Kerala India.
authors.forename: Liji
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Prasannan
authors.affiliation: Department of Post Harvest technology and Agriculture Processing, Kelappaji College of Engineering and Technology, Tavanur-679 573, Malapuram Dist., Kerala India.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Habeeba
authors.affiliation: Department of Post Harvest technology and Agriculture Processing, Kelappaji College of Engineering and Technology, Tavanur-679 573, Malapuram Dist., Kerala India.
authors.forename: M V
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Prince
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioresource Engineering, Macdonald Campus, Mcgill University, 21,111 Lakeshore road, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Canada H9X 3V9.
authors.forename: G S V
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Raghavan
keywords: N-hexane; Ohmic heating; Rice bran; Solvent extraction