<p>With growing concern over energy shortages and environmental pollution, alternative sustainable fuels have been explored to meet these demands. One among these being biodiesel, a fuel made from non-edible oil. In this study, <i>Jatropha oil</i> was considered and studied due to its high lipid content. For the transesterification process, NaOH/Chitosan-Fe₃O₄, a heterogeneous catalyst was selected for the production of biodiesel. The produced biodiesel was characterized to analyse the presence of methyl ester groups by GC-MS, FT-IR and NMR. Optimization of parameters was done by varying the oil-to-methanol ratio, catalyst loading percentage, and the time while maintaining constant temperature. The maximum biodiesel yield of 89.50% was obtained at an Oil: Methanol ratio of 1:12, 1wt% catalyst and at 3&#xa0;h. The Langmuir Hinshelwood model was considered a suitable model compared to the other kinetic models used in this study based on the linearity. It was also identified that internal and external mass transfer limitations were negligible and surface reaction was the rate determining step. Based on the results obtained, it was concluded that biodiesel was efficiently formed by the process of transesterification using the synthesized heterogeneous catalyst and had a maximum recyclability of 3.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>