CPB 30303 OIL AND FAT PROCESS TECHNOLOGY

UNIVERSITI KUALA LUMPUR

MALAYSIAN INSTITUTE OF CHEMICAL & BIOENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT COVER PAGE

Title of Assignment:
Oil And Fat Application : Soap

Name & ID No:

Azwan Bin Ahmad [55213115254]
Date of Submission:
6 September 2017
*Penalty:
For any late of submission, the mark will be reduced by 5% per day to a maximum of 3 days, after which it will NOT BE ACCEPTED.
Plagiarism will not be tolerated and will be given ZERO.

TOTAL MARK:
100% 5%

REPORT
Wt Unacceptable Poor Satisfactory Good Excellent Marks
Criteria
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Introduction 2
Description 1
Discussion 2
Application 2
Conclusion 1
References 2
TOTAL SCORE :
TOTAL MARK = (TOTAL SCORE / 50) x 50% :

SLIDE
Wt Unacceptable Poor Satisfactory Good Excellent Marks
Criteria
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Organization 1
Content 2
Suitability 1
Originality 1
TOTAL SCORE :
TOTAL MARK = (TOTAL SCORE / 25) x 30% :

PRESENTATION
Wt Unacceptable Poor Satisfactory Good Excellent Marks
Criteria
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Explanation and 2
understanding
Communication skills and 2
expression
Ability to handle Q&A 1
TOTAL SCORE :
TOTAL MARK = (TOTAL SCORE / 25) x 20% :
INTRODUCTION

Soap is a combination of animal fat or plant oil and caustic soda. Soap dissolve in
water, it will breaks the dirt away from the surface that was contact by the dirt. It is wildly use
in to cure the skin sores, dye hair or as a salve or skin ointment back in the days. However, it
is generally use to cleanse or act as perfume to the human body. The origin of the soap are
unknown but Roman sources claim it dates back to the 600 b.c when a Phoenicians combine
the goat’s tallow and wood ash. It was used primarily as a medicine during the Roman empire.
Around 12th century, England began to manufacturing the soap and a high tax was taken upon
the soap-makers. In the early soap manufacturers simply boiled a wood ash solution and
animal fat.

Around 1790, Nicolas Leblanc create a method to extracting caustic soda(sodium

hydroxide) and replacing the wood ash from the soap making. Chemist name Eugene-Michel
Chevreul prove the soap-forming process as known as English saponification which splits the
fatty acids and then react with alkali carbonates to form soap and also create a byproduct
which is glycerin. The soap required two major raw materials such as fat and alkali. The oil can
be obtained from animal fat or vegetable fat such as olive oil, palm kernel oil, and coconut oils.
Around 1940, the engineers and scientists come up with a better solution to replace the kettle
method which required four to eleven days of making the soap which called the continuous
process.

The continuous process consist of four process which are splitting, mixing, cooling
and finishing, and milling. Splitting will split the natural fat into fatty acids and glycerin. Next the
mixing, the fatty is mix with the alkali. For the cooling and finishing, the soap is molds and
enable it to hardens into large slab. Lastly the milling, the soap is fed through several sets of
heavy rollers and perfumes will be added during this times.

However, during this process, severals problem might arise. Firstly, the crack
happen on the soap . Next is the soap mixing and emulsion issues. When the soap is cut into
desire size, there will have pockets of oils or Iye at the soap and the size of the pocket will be
random. Lastly the fragrance oil issues, some of the fragrance oil can cause seizing which
means it will get hard and lumpy. Unsuitable fragrance oil will heat up the soap and will make
the soap changing phase from solid to gel and unable to use the soap.

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DESCRIPTION

THEORY

The making of soap also known as saponification which consist a base and triglycerides
to produce soap (salt) and glycerol. This can be shown by the reaction below.

The most common base that was use to make the soap is sodium hydroxide or potassium
hydroxide. The sodium hydroxide is used when a solid or hard soap wanted to be produce
while the potassium hydroxide was used to produce a liquid soaps.

Soaps consist two parts, hydrophopic and hydrophilic. The hydrophilic part is the head
which contain a negatively charged head while the hydrophobic is the tail. The hydrophilic or
head is soluble in water while the tail is insoluble in water. The mechanism of the soap can be
illustrated by the diagram below.

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 Figure 1: Mechanism of soap

The diagram above show that the head will dissolve in water while the tail will dissolve in dirt.
Therefore, the dirt will get pull by the soap and will be remove as the water drain from the
surface such as human skin.

RAW MATERIAL

In generals, the soap only needed base and fatty acid. For the base, the most common
base that was used is sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide depending on what kind of
soap that need to be produce. For the fatty acid, it can be contain from animal fat or vegetables
oil. For example, palm kernel oil, olive oil, jojoba and etc.

Figure 2: Sodium Hydroxide Figure 3: Palm Oil

Perfume and colouring are optional in the making of the soap but it is highly recommend to
give the soap an extra texture and odour.

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MANUFACTURE OF SOAP

Figure 4: The Lever Rexona soap manufacturing batch process

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 From the above diagram, the oil mix will contain severals types of oil such as palm oil,
jojoba oil and etc in order to get the desired texture of soap. As for the Colgate-Palmolive
process, the most common oil used are tallow and coconut oil. They are blend together and
then enter the vacuum dryer to dried it. In order to remove the coloured impurities, the vacuum
chamber will suck in the bleaching earth and then the oils is stored for saponification process.

The bleached oils then is mixed with spent lye from the washing stage and also a
coustic soda solution. Then it is heated and then left it to settle until two layers was form. The
neutral lye is pump out of the mixture and the left over (soap and unreacted oil) will rise to the
top is left in the pan. The remaining mixture is then mix with a more coustic liquor and reheated
to saponify the unreacted oil.

A counter current of lye was used to washed the crude soap that was pumped into a
divided pan unit (DPU). The lye is a mixture of solution that consist fresh brine solution and
nigre lye. Then the soap is sent to the fitting pans while the lye exit at the near end and was
pumped back into the saponification pans.

The soap was then reboiled with water, sodium chloride and a little amount of sodium
hydroxide solution in order to remove any unwanted glycerin from it. This will create two layer
of solution. The top is the wet soap and the bottom is the nigre layer and consist of a solution
of soap, glycerin and sodium chloride. The lower layer of nigre lye will form a soap crust after
it is reboiled with further salt and left to stand. The soap is then mixed with the next intake of
washed soap while the nigre lye will re-entered to the DPUs to wash the next batch of crude
soap.

After that the soap will enter a drying process and form a soap chips. Then soap is
blend and will exit the mold machine in a form of plodder worms. Then it is crushed to enter
another mold machine but in a noodle form before it remold it again to form a long bar of soap.
A cutter machine will cut the soap bar into a smaller pieces and the soap will enter the last
molding machine to shape the soap into required shape and lastly will enter the packaging.

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DISCUSSION

Figure 5: Crack on the soap

The crack that happen on the soap can be causes by many factors. The most common
issues is the overheating the soap. When the soap is heated beyond the ranged of 34⁰C to
54⁰C, crack will occured at the soap. This is because the gel phase during the molding process
where the soap can reach up to 82⁰C and get gelatinous in the mold. The centre of the soap
will remove heat the slowest and the outside of the soap will remove the heat faster. This
phenomenon will cause the soap to expand slightly and not uniformly due to the temperature
different across the soap. Thus, this will result crack happen on the outside of the soap. This
crack issue also causes by the lye heaviness. If too much lye was added into the mixture, this
will lead to lye heavy bar soap. The lye will make the soap to dry and might crack the soap.

Figure 6: soap mixing and emulsion issue

The soap mixing and emulsion issues has severals type for the soap. Firstly, the soap
has separated in the mold. This is because the false trace or not reaching a steady emulsion

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during the process. Next is uneven texture of the soap. When cutting the soap, the hardness
of the soap is unequivalent and make it some part to be hard and the other to be soft. Lastly
the pockets of oils or lye on the soap. As show from the picture above, the colour of the soap
is different at certain surface. This is because the mixture of the soap was not stable and it
could be cause by excessive oil or lye. The lye or oils will create uneven texture because the
lye will disturb the hardness of the soap and the oil will make the surface become oily and this
will leads to the soap mixing and emulsion issue.

Lastly, the fragrance oil issue. Not all fragrance are suitable for all type of soap.
Fragrance can cause the soap to enter back to the gel phase. This is because some fragrance
can cause the soap to heat up. Since the acceptable temperature for the soap is around 30 -
50⁰C. So if the soap heat up when the fragrance is added, the soap might enter the gel phase.
Fragrance also can causes seizing. This is the worst scenerio that could happen to the soap
because the soap cannot be to produce bubble and cannot work properly. Lastly the fragrance
also might accelerate the oil trace meaning the soap will getting thick rapidly.

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APPLICATION

CLEANING AGENT

Soap is mainly known to clean up dirt from a surface like human skin. The soap
mechanism will attract most dirt and will be remove via water. Thus, this will make the surface
become more cleaner than before.

LUBRICANT

Bar soap can act as lubricant at certain cases because the soap is build up of oil and
base. For example, soap can lubricate the metal rails of sticking desk drawers to make it easier
for closing and opening.

DETECTOR

Due to the soap that can form bubble when mix with water, the soap indirectly can act
as a detector. For example, a punctured motorcycle tyre can be detect by using a soap mix
with water and then spray to the tyre to detect where the air leaks. Another example is checking
a home gas tube for leaking.

BUG REPELLENT

Caterpillar is the most annoiying bug that could harm the plant. This is where the soap
come in handy. Mix the soap with water and then spray to the leaves to keep bugs off from the
plant. This also can be use in the house to keep the spiders away.

SOOT PREVENTION

When using a cast iron pot, rub the soap at the bottom of the pot before start cooking.
This will prevent the soot from accumulating and this will also make the clean up alot easier.

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CONCLUSION

As for conclusion, the soap is a compulsory for every people for its daily life. The main
ingredient in making soap is base and oils(animal or vegetable). The base(sodium hydroxide
or potassium hydroxide) and the oil (tryglycerides) will react to form soap (carboxylic acid salts)
and glycerol also known as saponification process. The soap consist two part which is
hydrophilic and hydrophobic. This enable the soap to remove dirt from a surface. Various type
of soap have different characteristic. For instant, animal fat produce more foam of soap rather
than the vegetable oils. To produce the soap, the washing process need severals times in
order to get a good yield of soap and a precist lye amount also needed to preven lye heavy
bar soap from happening. Soap also sensitive to the temperature during the process in making
the soap because inappropriate temperature will leads to cracking on the soap. The application
of the soap was not limited to only one which is cleaning. It has many other more application
such as bug repellent, lubricant and etc. Therefore, soap is needed and can be use in many
way.

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References
Cavitch, S. M. (1995). The Natural Soap Book : Making Herbal and Vegetable-Based Soap. Storey
Communications.

Maine, S. (1995). The Soap Book : Simple Herbal Recipes. Interweave Press.

Sandra Felix, J. A. (2017). Soap Production: A Green Prospective. Waste Management, 190-195.

Spitz, L. e. (1990). Soap Technologies in the 1990s. American Oil Chemists Society.

Wansbrough, H. (1990). Detergent A Soap. Encluclopaedia Britannica, 1-13.

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