Vol. 5, Issue 1 (2017)

The research was carried out to extract bio oil from rice straw at different parameters. The major problem in production of bio-oil is its increase in density with the passage of time. The reason for such phenomenon is the cross-linking of lignin which was bound to bio-oil after pyrolysis. The aim of this work was to reduce the lignin content in rice straw and study the effects of decreased lignin content in bio-oil. Additionally enzymatic saccharification of rice straw was also conducted after pre-treatment to estimate optimum conditions for bio-oil production. The independent variables for the optimization of enzymatic saccharification were, time (24, 48, 72 hours), Enzymatic loading ratio (5:10, 10:10, 15:10), substrate concentration (4, 5, 6% w/v) were taken into account. Designed experiments were conducted randomly to find the effect of these variables on reducing sugar, lignin and ash. The analysis of variance for each sample was calculated. The reducing sugar increased with increase in time and enzyme loading ratio while lignin content increased with increase in substrate concentration 48.1 to 51.1% w/w and 9.1 to 12.1 w/w. Optimum value of levels of independent variables obtained by compromise optimization of the responses were; 64.8 h time, 15:10 enzyme loading ratio and 4.62 substrate concentrations.