INTRODUCTION

Soap is a cleansing and emulsifying agent made by reaction of alkali and fatty acids
using saponification process. It usually comes in a form of solid molded and thick liquid
form. Saponification process involves in converting fats or oil into fatty acids’ salts. Fats that
being used in the process are saturated monocarboxylic acid that have long carbon chains at
least 10 carbons. Before the existence of palm oil industries, people in old days used
vegetable oils and animal fats to make the soap. However when palm oil being introduced in
the markets, soap industries start to use palm oil as their main fats. These fats are also called
glycerides. There are three types of glycerides which are monoglyceride, diglyceride and
triglyceride.

Figure 1 Structures of glycerides.

Much soap is mixtures of sodium or potassium salts of fatty acids which can be
derived from fats by reacting them with sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide. The fats
are hydrolyzed by the base, yielding glycerol and crude soap. Potassium salts of fatty acids
usually exist in thick liquid form at room temperature and sodium salt of fatty acids are in
solid form. Even though palm oil is more famous fats used in saponification process, the
animal fats still been used in soap manufacturing. Animal fats or also called as tallow is a
rendered form of beef or mutton fats. At room temperature, tallow present in solid form and
due to its saturated fats contains in the tallow makes it lifetime longer without need for
refrigerator.
 Figure 2 Tallow

In saponification process, there are 2 different methods which consist of cold process
and hot process. Cold process is a method of making soap which not using outer heat source
to initiate the process. This kind of method is commonly used by the small soap
manufacturers. An alkaline solution is mixed with certain amount of fats or oils to start the
saponification process that leads to soap. Soap then being poured into a mold line that heavily
wax paper and allowed to continue saponification for 18-24 hours. In this duration, soap
slowly go through gel phase and keeping give off heat until it become solid. Then the soap
will undergo curing phase which usually takes 2-6 weeks. Successful cold process method
highly depends on correct amount of lye solution. Hot process otherwise still use similar
procedure but at the gel phase, salt been added to harden the soap.

Soap is a good cleanser because it had capability to remove the dirt. Soap is acts as an
emulsifying agent. An emulsifying agent is an agent that had ability to immerse into
unmixable-liquid. This means that the oil which is does not mixed well with water can be
remove with help from soap that can suspend oil and removed it. There is two part in the soap
that can attracts water and oil which are hydrophobic and hydrophilic. The hydrophilic or
known as water-loving carboxylate group would interact with water molecules. The water is
bonding with hydrophilic via ion-dipole interaction and hydrogen interaction. The
hydrophobic (water-fearing) is one of the parts in the soap that do not interacts with water.
The oil or dirt will attract with hydrophobic part and formed micelles.
 Figure 1: Image of Micelles

In the micelles, hydrophobic tail could coagulate with hydrocarbon chain such as oil into
negatively-charged spherical surface. The hydrocarbon inside in the sphere, it can repel with
water.

The disadvantages of soap is the soap is not very effective in hard water. In the hard
water, there is presence of alkaline metal such as magnesium, calcium or iron. The fatty acid
in the soap is less soluble compared to potassium salts or sodium salts. It would form a
precipitate or soap scum when free fatty acid is combined with dirt. The synthetic detergent is
best solution because it can be dissolved in alkali or acidic solutions and it would not form
insoluble precipitate.