A B S T R A C T In this work, biodiesel was produced from castor oil using CaO obtained from snail shell as a catalyst. The castor oil was extracted using soxhlet extraction method and pretreated in order to upgrade it physicochemical properties for efficient transesterification reaction. The catalyst used was prepared from snail shell using the hydrothermal method and characterized using FTIR and TGA/DTA analysis. The yield of biodiesel produced is 99.68 %. The methyl ester yield was analyzed

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... sing GC-MS as 99.12 %. The major methyl ester compositions in the biodiesel produced are (86.18 %) 9-octadecenoic acid-12-hydroxyl-, methyl ester, [R-(Z)]-, (10.06 %) 9-0ctadecenoic acid [Z]-, methyl ester,(1.19 %) Hexadecanoic acid, methyl ester and (1.17 %) Methyl stearate. The physicochemical properties of biodiesel produced show that the biodiesel produced may be used in a diesel engine with little modifications or blend with conventional diesel.