Aim: To prepare soap from vegetable oil and sodium hydroxide.

Requirements:

Theory:

Soaps are carboxylate salts with very long hydrocarbon chains. Soap can be made from the base
hydrolysis of a fat or an oil. This hydrolysis is called saponification. Traditionally, soaps were
made from animal fat and (NaOH).
An example of a saponification reaction is shown below.

Procedure for Soap Preparation

25 ml of coconut oil was taken in a measuring cylinder and poured into a 250 ml glass beaker. 30
ml of 20% NaOH solution was added into the beaker containing vegetable oil. Mixture was
vigorously stirred using a glass rod. The beaker becomes warm and the mixture was heated using
a Bunsen burner till the mixture become a whitish paste. The beaker was removed from the flame
and allowed to cool. A red litmus paper was dipped in the suspension formed. When dipped in
the suspension, the red litmus paper changes its colour to blue. When a blue litmus paper is
dipped in the suspension, the colour of blue litmus paper remains the same. To the above
suspension, 15g of common salt was added and stirred the solution well with a glass rod. After
adding common salt, soap in the suspension gets precipitated out as solid. The content in the
beaker was filtered. After filtration, soap is left behind in the filter paper and transfered the soap
into another filter paper using a spatula and dried it by pressing with another filter paper. Then,
the soap was cut into desired shape with a knife.
Result:

Weight of the soap:

pH of the sosp: