Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Dissolving coconut oil

CHRIS25 - 25-6-2012 at 03:45

I am asking this question on behalf of my wife who makes a lot of soap. This time she is using Coconut oil, it is quite thick and not in liquid form.

I understand quite well that you could dissolve this in Ethanol, and upon heating the alchohol would evaporate so would not affect the soap. Unfortunately unable to find out on the web how really to dissolve this, even on soap making sights.

So I would be grateful if someone could suggest something.

After she had followed specific instructions and a recipe formula the oil precipitated out of the solution after 12 hours, one can only summize from this that the dutch recipe used a brand not mentioned or sold here in Ireland.

weiming1998 - 25-6-2012 at 05:12

Quote: Originally posted by CHRIS25  
I am asking this question on behalf of my wife who makes a lot of soap. This time she is using Coconut oil, it is quite thick and not in liquid form.

I understand quite well that you could dissolve this in Ethanol, and upon heating the alchohol would evaporate so would not affect the soap. Unfortunately unable to find out on the web how really to dissolve this, even on soap making sights.

So I would be grateful if someone could suggest something.

After she had followed specific instructions and a recipe formula the oil precipitated out of the solution after 12 hours, one can only summize from this that the dutch recipe used a brand not mentioned or sold here in Ireland.


Dissolving it in ethanol will not work, as on the addition of NaOH, a transesterification reaction would occur instead, leaving you with the ethyl ester of the fatty acids, instead of the sodium salt. In simple terms, you will make biodiesel instead of the desired soap.

I suppose even if the coconut oil is solid, it would still hydrolyze to form the soap with NaOH over time, just longer. At what temperature does the coconut oil melt? You can just heat the NaOH solution+oil in a steel can in a water bath or directly on a very small flame over the stove. It would speed up the hydrolysis a lot and melt the oil.

I have no experience in soap making though, this is just me considering what would happen chemically.

barley81 - 25-6-2012 at 05:39

Maybe your wife could try the hot process instead of the cold process? It requires a lot less curing time and she will not have a problem with solidifying coconut oil.

watson.fawkes - 25-6-2012 at 05:41

Quote: Originally posted by weiming1998  
At what temperature does the coconut oil melt?
Between room temperature and body temperature. I have some in my pantry. You can get liquid coconut oil by heating up the container in warm tap water.

CHRIS25 - 25-6-2012 at 07:07

Hi, ok, maybe I should have given the ingredients. Firstly she is not using sodium hydroxide for this soap because she is making shower gel. Sorry. secondly she did heat the coconut oil up in warm water and it did dissolve, the problem was that it precipitated after it was mixed with the following ingredients: 60 mls of water, dried lavender, 'pinch' of citric acid granules. the water was boiled. Maybe this changes things? After 12 hours it precipitated out but there was a small amount of precipitation right from the beginning.

[Edited on 25-6-2012 by CHRIS25]

ldanielrosa - 26-6-2012 at 00:58

Can you give the proportions of the ingredients too please?

I made a shower gel too once, and it's true I didn't use sodium hydroxide... it was potassium hydroxide. Me cogs may be a bit rusty at the moment, but without a metal hydroxide I don't see how you get soap.

I use the (nominally) cold process too, but that doesn't exclude heating the fats to melt them if necessary. Usually I just make plain castile, but my most recent batch has 10% coconut oil. I was curious to see if the lather would improve. I also made some from bacon grease for laughs.