CHRIS25
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Dissolving coconut oil
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.
‘Calcination… is such a Separation of Bodies by Fire, as makes ‘em easily reducible into Powder; and for that reason ‘tis call’d by some
Chymical Pulverization.’ (John Friend, Chymical Lectures London, 1712)
Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it. (William Penn 1644-1718)
The very nature of Random, Chance development precludes the existence of Order - strange that our organic and inorganic world is so well defined by
precision and law. (me)
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weiming1998
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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.
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barley81
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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.
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watson.fawkes
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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.
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CHRIS25
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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]
‘Calcination… is such a Separation of Bodies by Fire, as makes ‘em easily reducible into Powder; and for that reason ‘tis call’d by some
Chymical Pulverization.’ (John Friend, Chymical Lectures London, 1712)
Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it. (William Penn 1644-1718)
The very nature of Random, Chance development precludes the existence of Order - strange that our organic and inorganic world is so well defined by
precision and law. (me)
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ldanielrosa
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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.
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