Introduction

Oils and fats are the chief raw materials in making the
potassium or sodium salts of higher
chain fatty acids which are commonly known as ‘soaps’. Saponification or the
alkaline hydrolysis of oils or fats is the conversion of the fatty acids to their potassium
or sodium salts by treating them with alkalis like potassium hydroxide or sodium
hydroxide.

Saponification value, on the other hand, is the amount of potassium hydroxide

(KOH) required to completely saponify the fatty material present in 1g of fat.
Saponification value, considered as the average weight of all the fatty acids present in
the sample, gives the character of the fatty acids contained in the fat. It is also
significant in order to describe the amount of the base required to neutralize the free
fatty acids present in one gram of the fat or oil. This simply means that saponification
value is a measure of the molecular weights of the triglycerides in oils and fats. High
saponification value of triglycerides is preferable in terms of soap-making. This is
because triglycerides with high saponification value produces better quality of soaps
than the triglycerides with low saponification value. However, the long chain fatty
acids found in fats have low saponification value compared with short chain fatty
acids (Sukumaran, 2013). This is because long-chained fatty acids have relatively
fewer number of carboxylic functional groups per unit mass of the fats,

In this experiment, the saponification value of the corn oil analyzed is ano na di
ibutang man mg KOH/g sample which is higher than the standard value. Corn oil has
a relatively lower saponification value of ano na di ibutang man compared with
other common oils like coconut oil (248-265mgKOH/oil). Since the saponification
value is inversely proportional to the molecular weight due to the chains of
triacylglycerol, it is expected that the sample should have a lower saponification value.
It was also found that there is ano na di ibutang man % glycerin present for every
gram of sample.

Conclusion

Generally, high saponification value indicates high proportion of short-chained fatty

acids and vice versa. The calculated saponification value justifies the presence of
long-chained fatty acids in the sample. Hence, the sample is composed of
long-chained fatty acid in small proportions.