The quantitative effects of sugar concentration, nitrogen concentration, EDTA, temperature, pH and time of fermentation on ethanol production were optimized using a Box-Wilson central composite design (CCD) experiment. It was found that palmyra jaggery (sugar syrup from the palmyra palm) is a suitable substrate for the production of high concentrations of ethanol using Saccharomyces cerevisiae NCIM 3090 by submerged fermentation. A maximum ethanol concentration of 129.4 g/l was obtained after optimizing media components and conditions of fermentation. The optimum values were a temperature of 26.2°C, pH of 8.4, time of fermentation of 4.2 days with 398.5 g of substrate/l, 3.