Homemade Soap Recipe

Homemade soap with lard and caustic soda:

Put 20 grams of lard, 7 grams of sodium hydroxide and 50 milliliters of water in a beaker and heat it with an alcohol lamp. While heating, keep stirring so that the lard and sodium hydroxide react fully. This part of the reaction takes longer because the reaction is slower. During the reaction, water should be added several times to make up for the water lost through evaporation.

When you see the surface of the reaction mixture is no longer floating a layer of melted state of the original fat (i.e., no role of lard), that lard and sodium hydroxide has basically reacted completely, you can stop heating. Then add 50mls of hot saturated salt solution into the beaker while it is still hot, stir well, and then leave it to cool down, so that the sodium stearate is precipitated out of the mixture.

Finally, the solid sodium stearate floating in the upper layer of the solution is taken out, and the solution adsorbed on the surface of the solid (in which glycerin, salt and sodium hydroxide are dissolved) is rinsed off with water, and then dried and shaped into a bar of soap.

There are three keys to this experiment:

1. lard and sodium hydroxide reaction time must be enough, never rush, must wait for the surface of the mixture can not be seen floating grease, before stopping the heat. If the reaction is incomplete, the soap will contain excess oil wax and sodium hydroxide, so that the detergency of the soap will be reduced, and with a greater alkaline.

2. During the reaction, do not forget to replenish enough water. Always keep about 50 milliliters of water in the mixture.

3. After the reaction, the volume of the mixture should remain similar to that before the reaction. After the sodium stearate precipitates, there is still a certain amount of water in the mixture so that the glycerol, sodium chloride and the unused sodium hydroxide remain in the water. If there is too little water, these three substances will mix with the soap and affect its quality.