# Activated Charcoal & Essential Oils



## joy. (Feb 18, 2016)

Has anyone noticed whether or not activated charcoal tends to absorb/weaken/deodorize your essential oils in cp soap? 

I cannot get orange EO to stick, and I'm wondering if the charcoal is at least part of my problem. I've tried anchoring with cedarwood, lemongrass, refrigerated, tried adding to hp after the cook, but it just fades to nothing after a few weeks (or days) in every batch. I'm going to try again with some clay or tapioca starch, maybe litsea instead of lemongrass, but I'm wondering if I should leave out the charcoal, too.


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## shunt2011 (Feb 18, 2016)

I make a tea tree and orange charcoal soap and haven't had an issue with the scent sticking. However with citrus it helps a great deal if you anchor it with something else.   Even some litsea helps


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## joy. (Feb 18, 2016)

OK, thanks. I'll give it another try with litsea. I just made a candle with that blend and it smells amazing.


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## cmzaha (Feb 18, 2016)

Nope, but orange eo is notorious for fading. I always mix orange with something else


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## joy. (Feb 18, 2016)

cmzaha said:


> Nope, but orange eo is notorious for fading. I always mix orange with something else



I can't even get it to stick when it _is_ mixed with something else. I haven't tried a clay or starch yet, and I did have some luck mixing kaolin and lime EO.


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## KristaMarie (Feb 18, 2016)

In my orange bar I used kaolin and stuck the loaf immediately in the freezer to avoid gel. I used 10x from BB


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## Soapmaker145 (Feb 18, 2016)

I second the 10X orange from BB.  It sticks very well and a little goes a long way.  The regular orange EO and other citrus EO never worked consistently for me, clay or no clay.


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## joy. (Feb 18, 2016)

Awesome! I just got the 10x from BB. The other one I had was only 5x. I'm feeling a little more optimistic about it now.


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## shunt2011 (Feb 19, 2016)

I have the 15X from WSP.  That helps too.


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## BrewerGeorge (Feb 19, 2016)

I don't think charcoal makes scents less powerful.  I have a lime FO and tea tree EO bar that is black as coal, and it still smells great.


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## Dr.J (Mar 4, 2016)

I _have_ experienced activated carbon effecting the scents in my soap.

I made a batch of soap last year (without carbon), scented with a blend of orange, lime, cedar, patch and juniper that me and my neighbor really liked. In fact I keep a small bottle of the EO blend for other uses.

I made another batch of this soap at Christmas with the same EO blend, but this time I added activated carbon (before trace) to color the bar. The scent in the cured bar was quite different; weaker overall and the citrus was highly muted while the cedar was relatively stronger. I didn't really care for the scent in this batch. The soap smells quite different than the EO blend in the bottle.

My guess is that the activated carbon absorbed the smaller terpenes (like limonene in the citrus) to a greater degree than the larger sesquiterpenes (like the cedrenes in the cedar).


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