In chemistry, soap is a salt of long chain fatty acid. They are mainly used for cleaning, bathing and washing. Washing soap is obtained by treating vegetable or animal fats and oils with a strong solution of alkali. The alkali solution known as lye bring about saponification reaction that involves hydrolyzing fats into fatty acids that react with alkali to form crude soap. Soaps are a key component for lubricating grease and are also very important for effective hygiene and hand washing. There are various methods of soap making such as melt, pour soap making, hot process soap making, batch and cold process soap making. However, soap is mainly made is soap kitchen and the process used is the cold process method. In the method, lye chemically reacts with some oils to generate soap.
The proportions to be used in the mixing are specified, and any deviations can lead to complications. In the initial process, warming of solid oils such as palm oils is done. Apart from this process heat is required no more. Considering natural making of soap, chemical processes occur. Cold process is by far the easiest method to make soap. Many people have an interest in making soap, but they fear handling lye since it sounds far from natural, and its warning are scary. There is an alternative to making soap without using lye and it is the use of melt and pour base that does not produce best quality soaps.
In the soap kitchen, soap is usually made by a reaction of the oil with a strong base like sodium hydroxide with a very high Ph. It is based on glycerin molecule. The soap maker determines the saponification value for unique oil and fat specification sheet since the value for specific fat may vary by season and by specimen species. The value is used to determine the amount of sodium hydroxide to be used with fat to form soap.
Nevertheless, there are three glycerol molecules that are attached with fatty acids. The soap making reaction is often referred to as saponification. It involves the reaction of the fat with a strong alkali. In most soap kitchens, sodium hydroxide is used as the base as opposed to caustic potash. Various fats or oils can be used to make soaps depending on the properties that are intended for the soap for example olive oil makes a hard bar soap in the cold process. There are two known primary forms of fatty acids; saturated and unsaturated. In terms of structure, fatty acids have a zigzag form in their structure. The commonly used are lauric, stearic and meristic acids. In the case of unsaturated fatty acids, they form kinks due to the double bonds they possess. Common unsaturated fatty acids include alpha and gamma acids. The major drawback of soaps made from unsaturated acids is that their efficiency in cleaning is low this is due to the soft soap bars produced. The soaps are thus gentle.
On the other hand, the soaps made from saturated acids are rough on the skin. The soap’s cleaning ability and its hardness, and the amount of each saponified fatty acid in the resulting soap will reflect how the leather behaves. In overall the acids produces stable lather, while as unsaturated fatty acids produces but unstable lather. There are exceptions to this fact. The bases required for soap making must contain the hydroxyl ions that break the oils into glycerin and soap. Sodium hydroxide is known for producing hard bars. The reason to this is that the sodium ions are smaller as compared to potassium ions.
In the soap kitchen, there are also tools, soap calculators and tables that compute the required proportions. The tools used are not the ones for cooking and not made of copper and aluminum as they react with lye. On the other hand, plastics are not be used since they melt but the best tools used are made of glass. On the contrary, the calculators aid in making the correct decisions on the ratios that are appropriate. Also, they help reduce errors in computing proportion values. It makes use of kitchen scales. The most commonly used units in the measurements are grams. One should always ensure that less hydroxide are added to ensure that the soap does not end up too greasy.
Additionally, there is also another component in kitchen soap making that is essential; glycerin. This is the most commonly used component for making the mixture moist. This also means that the substance draws water to the final soap. Mass produced soaps usually a lot of glycerin. To avoid this, salting out is encouraged; this process reduces the solubility in a solution that is highly ionic.
In kitchen soap making, soap is made from combining an acid and an alkali known as lye, in precise proportions. It is possible to detect which oils and fats different soaps are made from. For example, if you make a certain soap, the name for the soap that will depend on the ingredients. So, given soap one can obviously know from what the soap what was made from. One may choose to use pure vegetable oils although animal fats can also be used. Some popular animal fats used in many kitchen soaps is the Beef Tallow. With the above facts about kitchen soap making it is indeed clear that proportions to be used are of great importance. Also, the chemistry concepts of soap making are of equal importance.
