How do we make soap? (1 Viewer)

[juventino]

like above :

How do we make soap?

 

[abdooooo!!!]

use salt and fats, boil it.

 

[happyafghanboy]

Soap is made from strong alkali reacting with fats *

 

[Kujah]

we made an experiment today. We used olive oil, mixed with some sodium hydroxide, which we then boiled using a hotplate. After constant stirring (boring), we added sodium chloride. The foam created turned out to be soap, which looked like clay to me.

 

[alcalder]

You need a good bit of lard to start with. Hence the reason they killed whale for their blubber - to make soap.

Check out Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap
(someone has done something to some of the text, but the important bit is OK)

Also look up saponification on Wikipedia and the net.

 

[minijumbuk]

EDIT: Oops, I only just realised that I was 4 years late.

It's made using an industrial process called saponification. Basically, an ester is boiled with sodium hydroxide (NaOH).
The common esters used are triesters, and they are usually triglycerides. They're basically made up of animal fats or any plant/animal oil.

Now there are 2 processes for saponification:
1. Kettle boiled batch process: Fats/oils are heated with NaOH to form soap. It's not a continuous process, but rather, the reactions are done in batches, hence the name.
2. Fatty acid neutralisation process: Involves a 2 stage continuous process: Production of fatty acid, then from fatty acid to form soap.
i)Hydrolysis: Fats/oils heated with water, which converts it into fatty acids
ii)Neutralisation: Fatty acids reacted with NaOH to form soaps.

Then, to precipitate the soap from the mixture, brine (concentrated NaCl solution) is added.
Then they treat the soap before packaging, ie. Soap washed, added perfume, colouring agents, etc.