Woldeyes, Belay (Professor)Gebreyohannes, Nigisty2018-07-162023-11-282018-07-162023-11-282017-06http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/8777The demand of world energy increases from time to time, this leads to gradual depletion of petroleum reserves, petroleum price rising and increases environmental problems. Beside to the above problems Ethiopia has additional diesel transportation cost. These all problems has motivated the search for sustainable and environment-friendly alternative renewable biofuels such as biodiesel. Since, it is non-toxic and capable of fulfilling an increasing energy demand. In this study biodiesel was produced by transesterification reaction in the presence of CaO with 99.5% ethanol. The biodiesel production process includes CSO extraction and CaO catalyst preparation from chicken egg shell waste. Moreover, this study characterizes the Physico-chemical properties of CSO and ethyl ester according ASTM D6751 standards to use the FAEE as an alternative fuel for diesel engines. All of the measured Physico-chemical properties of the biodiesel was in the range of the international standards. Design expert 7.0.0 with Box-Behnken was applied to investigate the effect of reaction parameters such as, reaction temperature (70, 75 and 80oC), ethanol to oil molar ratio (6:1, 9:1 and 12:1) and catalyst loading (1, 2 and 3%) on the yield of biodiesel. Significance of the process variables were analyzed by ANOVA. RSM was applied to investigate the interaction effect of process variables on the yield of biodiesel and to find the optimum yield. As the result of RSM optimization, the optimum yield of biodiesel 97.65 % w/w were found at an optimum reaction temperature of 73.71 oC, ethanol to oil ratio of 10.12:1 and a catalyst loading of 1.84 wt% of oil. Keywords: Cottonseed oil, Trans esterification, CaO, Biodiesel & OptimizationenCottonseed oil; Trans esterification; CaO; Biodiesel & OptimizationThesis