# eye burning sensation from my liquid soap



## samjesse (Jul 25, 2013)

Hi

I used the following to make my liquid soap,

24     oz olive oil pomanc
5      oz potassium hydroxide
15.1  oz of distilled water

neutralized with the following mix till Phenolphthalein gave a clear soap.
.5 oz citric acid
2 oz distilled water

but  unlike commercial soap, mine gives burning sensation when in contact  with the eyes. Is there a way to avoid this problem?  and how about  fixing this batch?

Many thx


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## robtr31 (Jul 25, 2013)

samjesse said:


> Hi
> 
> I used the following to make my liquid soap,
> 
> ...


 
keep away from eyes on most all soaps   

is this your first batch of soap that had this problem


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## dagmar88 (Jul 25, 2013)

samjesse said:


> Hi
> 
> I used the following to make my liquid soap,
> 
> ...



It's not a problem, it's what all soap, solid and liquid does.
Tear free washes are surfactant based and (close to) PH neutral.


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## guiceman (Jul 25, 2013)

....


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## Mommysoaper (Jul 26, 2013)

dagmar88 said:


> It's not a problem, it's what all soap, solid and liquid does.
> Tear free washes are surfactant based and (close to) PH neutral.



Yeah, the alkaline nature of soap does a number to your eyes.  It will never feel good in your eyes!  Just gotta be careful!:smile:


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## Robert (Jul 26, 2013)

samjesse said:


> but  unlike commercial soap, mine gives burning sensation when in contact  with the eyes.


Hey, wait...you found a commercial soap that doesn't sting eyes?  You sure you don't mean baby shampoo?


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## samjesse (Jul 29, 2013)

Robert said:


> Hey, wait...you found a commercial soap that doesn't sting eyes?  You sure you don't mean baby shampoo?




Dove soap bar.


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## dagmar88 (Jul 29, 2013)

samjesse said:


> Dove soap bar.




:wink: Dove does not sell soap. Their 'bars' are surfactant based cleansers.
That's why they use the word bar instead of soap.

http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ucm074201.htm

http://www.unilever.com/PIOTI/EN/p4.asp?selectCountry=UK&language=EN&productid=3053409


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## Sapwn (Jul 29, 2013)

dagmar88 said:


> :wink: Dove does not sell soap. Their 'bars' are surfactant based cleansers.
> That's why they use the word bar instead of soap.
> 
> http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ucm074201.htm
> ...


 


I am impressed! I didn’t know that.


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## samjesse (Jul 29, 2013)

So why use soap when we have  surfactant based cleansers?


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## Sapwn (Jul 30, 2013)

Why make surfactants or soap at all?

When we have ... lye!   :shock:



[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sLJ2k54OwI[/ame]


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## Robert (Jul 30, 2013)

samjesse said:


> Dove soap bar.


Even Dove stings my eyes, albeit not as much as actual soap soap.  Then again, even the earliest version of Johnson's Baby Shampoo stung my eyes a little, although it was an improvement in that regard over soap, which is all I had before baby shampoo came out.

OK, by now you know from other posts that you're trying to compare your soap to something that's only soaplike and doesn't even exist in liquid form.  (Dove has an amount of stearic acid which would be hard to incorporate into a liquid; their liquid products are formulated differently still.)  So the eye sting is not an indication of anything that "went wrong" in your liquid soap.  But if you're interested in making a low eye sting liquid, albeit not an actual soap soap, we can advise you about that.

BTW, Dove does (and AFAIK always did) have some actual soap soap in it, but that's not its main cleaning & lathering ingredient.

As to your question, why use [actual soap] soap, there are many reasons -- many of which, however, apply less to liquid products than to solids.  Specifically why do hobbyists make soap as opposed to other detergents?  Basically it's because soap is the only detergent that's easy enough to make for most hobbyists out of something that's a different chemical substance.  There are plenty of hobbyists who make other detergent products for washing skin & hair, but what practically all of them (I'm allowing the possibility it's not 100%) do is just mixing ingredients, not transforming them chemically.  Of course, the same can be said of melt & pour soap making and of hobbyist lotion making, bath fizzie making, etc.  I only mixed the ingredients for my liquid bubble mixture, for instance, even though I'm a biochemist.

The reason for this is that saponification is a relatively easy thing to do.  The precursor ingredients to soap are esters, and esters break down easily.  And once they've broken these esters (mostly triglyceride) down, most hobbyists would not want to do a "workup" as is usually done after a reaction in organic chemistry to separate the products.  Rather, they keep all the products in the bar of soap (or liquid soap) that results: the fatty acid salt that chemists now mean by "soap", most of the water that was used, the glycerin that's also liberated from the glycerides, and the unsaponifiables which come thru from the fats & oils unreacted and contribute to the emollient properties of the product, not to mention superfatting.  Other than making soap, the only other surfactants I can fairly easily see a few hobbyists trying to synthesize would be some of the sugar esters, and even those would be considerably harder than making soap.  I have considered doing the mild-conditions sulfonation, using sulfites, required for the sulfosuccinate esters my bubble bath calls for.  The analogous process for most other surfactants requiring sulfonation would call for sulfuric or even fuming sulfuric acid!

Interestingly enough, one of the closest things to saponification of triglycerides is transesterification, which is a step in making some other surfactants, but was also done by hobbyists with waste cooking fats during the biodiesel fuel fad a few years ago.  Instead of water, it requires methyl alcohol, also with lye, but the process requires workup to remove impurities and to assure dryness.


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## dagmar88 (Jul 30, 2013)

samjesse said:


> So why use soap when we have  surfactant based cleansers?



Surfactants do not work for everyone or every product. Neither does soap.
So it's all about personal preferences, it's use and taking allergies/sensitives in account.


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## samjesse (Jul 30, 2013)

Many thx. I learn new things every day.


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