Woldeyes, Belay (PhD)Neme, Ibsa2018-07-132023-11-102018-07-132023-11-102016-06http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/8539Non-biodegradability process and non-solubility of mineral oil soap and synthetic detergent products cause to pollute fresh tap water. To overcome this problem replacing of the raw material of mineral oil by vegetable oil is the possible solution. Therefore; the objective of this study was extraction and optimization of castor oil from Castor seed for production of synthetic detergent. The extraction was carried out using soxhlet extraction units. In the soxhlet extraction a n-hexane was chosen to determine the effect of time and particle size on yield of the extraction oil. For the soxhlet extraction, the minimum oil yield has been determined as 24.7% after the extraction time of 2hours with particle size of 4mm and maximum oil yield 49.34% was found at the extraction time of 6hours in a particle size ranges from 2.55mm. Therefore, increasing extraction time and decreasing particle size will increase the amount of oil extracted. The research also revealed some properties of castor oil in terms of values obtained by the determination of saponification value of 172.4oil as proportional to the standard saponification of value of 177oil and the acid value (AV) of 11.22 maximum than the standard acid value of 10. Other parameters used to determine the quality of castor oil include specific gravity and pH tests. For the agitated mixing, the best quality (1.8cm of height foamability, 8.52 minimum pH value and good cleansing power) of silk fabric detergent was obtained. Therefore, increasing surfactants and decreasing caustic soda and vice versa adjusted the alkalinity of the detergent. And also increasing sodium silicate with sodium sulphate increases the cleansing power and foamability height of the produced detergent respectively. This paper work concludes that castor oil is good solvent for the production of synthetic detergent. However, as this paper use of only four ingredients is not enough for good quality of silk fabric detergents. Hence using other ingredients like optical brightness and enzymes was recommended for more good quality of synthetic detergents.enProcess Engineering streamThesis