Citric acid

[Sunibee]

Hi , I used 2% citric acid in my bar soaps and adjusted the naoh acordingly. The cp soap I barely managed to pour in the batter . But it turned out very brittle. . and I had to rebatch it after with lot of milk . It's fine now but I guess it is a butter bar . But when I used it in the HTFHP it volcanoes immediately and turned hard. Same story I just ground up the chunks into powder. What am I doing wring .? Help.plz . Do I also need to adjust the water ? I am leaving the water same . For example ..if lye is 68 and water is 190. For the same by weight of oils ..I used 10 gms citric acid and increased the naoh by 60 but tye water remained the same , is that where I am going wrong ?
With my regular formula my fluidHP soaps are perfect . Ease help .thank you

 

[Sunibee]

Hi , I used 2% citric acid in my bar soaps and adjusted the naoh acordingly. The cp soap I barely managed to pour in the batter . But it turned out very brittle. . and I had to rebatch it after with lot of milk . It's fine now but I guess it is a butter bar . But when I used it in the HTFHP it volcanoes immediately and turned hard. Same story I just ground up the chunks into powder. What am I doing wring .? Help.plz . Do I also need to adjust the water ? I am leaving the water same . For example ..if lye is 68 and water is 190. For the same by weight of oils ..I used 10 gms citric acid and increased the naoh by 60 but tye water remained the same , is that where I am going wrong ?
With my regular formula my fluidHP soaps are perfect . Ease help .thank you

** Volcanoed , ** wrong

 

[AliOop]

Are you dissolving the citric acid in the water before adding the lye?

If you can provide your entire recipe, including all additives, that will help us figure out what might be happening.

 

[Sunibee]

Are you dissolving the citric acid in the water before adding the lye?

If you can provide your entire recipe, including all additives, that will help us figure out what might be happening.

Yes I am dissolving the CA in water before adding Lye. I also add tussah silk to water before adding Lye The lady who told us that we can add 3 to 4% CA now tells.me it's not 1 gm but 10 gms CA to 6 Naoh. Now my soap is lye heavy and I asked her what to do she asked me to add oils ..really confusing. What can I do
This is my formula

 

[AliOop]

Oh, I missed it in your first post that you added 60g extra lye (not 6g) to compensate for the citric acid. Yes, your soap is extremely lye heavy!

Usually I’m up for rebatching with extra oils to avoid waste. However, your lye excess is so great that you would almost need to make a second batch of the oils in this recipe, skip the lye and the CA, and cook the oils together with the old batch to compensate for the excess.

It won’t be the exact recipe bc it will be a bit high on the superfat. But doing it this way is easier than refiguring the oils, and at least you won’t have to toss the entire thing.

Someone else may come along who could do the more exact math for you, in which case you could use just the amount of oils they recommend. Either way will work. Good luck!

 

[Sunibee]

Thank you . Yes was wondering how to deal with adding the oils . Will figure it out. Till then my regular fluid HP n liquid soap. N CP

 

[DLF]

Yes , by the looks of it . I agree it looks lye heavy. I make goatmilk soaps too and have recently reformulated my recipe to add citric acid and also had to reformulate because I use lanolin. My soap would seize too quickly.
My soaps have a oily surface and end with a grainy look . I suspect lye being the problem too. I won't know how crumbly until I cut .
I did read that adding CA would benefit from an addition of liquid. I make roughly 72 ounce batch and caramelization of sugars has been an issue I'm combating making goatmilk soap. Here is what I did . Perhaps it will give you an idea to experiment with in your new batch.
I divided my liquid GM quantity by half . Used ice water as a substitute for the lye solution. Enriched the GM liquid with the right proportion in GMP to compensate for the water . Recommendation of adding 2% extra lye to compensate for CA and add 1.5 -2 oz additional liquid .
My issue I believe lies in the recommended reduction of a formula oil to compensate for the lanolin. I need to work my numbers but I believe I missed something in my Calculations and my soap ended up lye heavy.

Well hope his helps in someway for you to re re-evaluate your formula process.
Happy Soaping!

 

[John Affinito]

Grams citric acid x 0.6246 = grams of extra lye (NaOH) needed. In your case, 10 grams citric acid x 0.6246 = 6.246 grams of extra lye required to neutralize 10 grams of citric acid. You added 10 times the required amount of lye to neutralize the citric acid.

 

[AliOop]

Actually, I am rethinking my previous answer. The excess citric acid would have neutralized the lye in your recipe, leaving you with little to no lye, and a whole lot of sodium citrate. Thus, I don’t believe that adding oils alone will work in this case.

@DeeAnna can you help here? I don’t want to tell her something that will result in wasting more ingredients!

 

[DeeAnna]

...Recommendation of adding 2% extra lye to compensate for CA and add 1.5 -2 oz additional liquid....

I don't understand how you can blindly add 2% extra NaOH to "compensate" for the citric acid. IMO, it's better to do the calculations and know what you're doing, rather than rely on blanket assumptions.

"...My issue I believe lies in the recommended reduction of a formula oil to compensate for the lanolin. I need to work my numbers but I believe I missed something in my Calculations and my soap ended up lye heavy......."

Lanolin should be treated just like a regular fat -- enter it into the soap recipe calculator just like any other fat, and let the calc do the math of calculating the NaOH weight. You don't need to reduce the other fats in order to "compensate" for the lanolin. It's a fat, albeit an unusual one, and there's nothing to compensate for. What you do want to keep in mind is lanolin is best used as a minor fat -- I limit lanolin to 5% or less of the total fats.

***

...The excess citric acid would have neutralized the lye in your recipe, leaving you with little to no lye, and a whole lot of sodium citrate. Thus, I don’t believe that adding oils alone will work in this case....

As I understand it, the basic issue is the OP added 60 grams of NaOH to neutralize citric acid when only 6 grams were required, right?

If so, I can't see where the "whole lot of sodium citrate" is coming from. Weren't there only 10 grams of citric acid added to in this batch? Or did I miss where more was added? If only the 10 grams citric acid were added, then that acid reacted with 6 grams of NaOH, leaving 54 grams of NaOH with no acids to react with, thus making a lye heavy soap.

Rebatching with extra fat might not solve this problem very well. Most typical rebatch methods only use enough water to get the soap melted into a smooth paste. If I was absolutely determined to fix this batch, I'd probably use a "salting out" method where an excess of water is used and the lye and soap mixture is cooked for some time.

Honestly, this is a small batch with big troubles. Is it truly worth the time and trouble to try to fix it? It might be more productive and rewarding to trash this batch and make a new one using the correct numbers.

***

The latest fad for the past the past year or two has been to use multiple additives in soap batches. These additives, including table salt, sodium lactate, sodium citrate, citric acid, vinegar (acetic acid), as well as various sugars, can and do interact with each other as well as with lye. This is leading to some unusual problems, especially when two or more salts are combined. Throw in a high temperature soap method, and the chance of problems jumps even higher.

This trend of using "everything including the kitchen sink" is causing soap to behave in unpredictable ways.

 

[TheGecko]

The latest fad for the past the past year or two has been to use multiple additives in soap batches. These additives, including table salt, sodium lactate, sodium citrate, citric acid, vinegar (acetic acid), as well as various sugars, can and do interact with each other as well as with lye. This is leading to some unusual problems, especially when two or more salts are combined.

This trend of using "everything including the kitchen sink" is causing soap to behave in unpredictable ways.

From a scientific POV, how much do additives really 'add' to a soap or are just simply "label appeal"? I use Sodium Lactate and Kaolin Clay,1 tea each PPO; am I adding to my soap or wasting time and money?

As much as I want to make the very best soap that I possibly can, it does no good if I have to charge $10.00 a bar because of the ingredients I use.

 

[cmzaha]

As many of us know I do add additives to my soaps but I have also put in my years of testing and know they work. My additives are Vinegar, EDTA, Sodium Gluconate, and Sorbitol.

I do or did when selling make a shea butter soap and GM soap only for label appeal and will most likely no longer make them, since I never found them to be that much more fantastic other than maybe my high Shea bar, but I can live without it and I destashed my shea.

Never blindly add in extra NaOH (lye), 60g was a lot of extra lye. I agree with DeeAnna that a batch is not worth trying to save. I had one complete failure which was a recipe I did not run through a lye calc or figure the numbers myself which was from a well-known soap teacher and website. To be honest it was probably a mismeasurement on my part that I never figured out so could not properly correct it. I never figured what went wrong and after two attempts to fix it and more wasted ingredients I ended up tossing it, which I should have done from the get-go. I was just being stubborn.

 

[AliOop]

@DeeAnna thank you - my precoffee brain confused itself by thinking she had added 60g of CA, not NAOh.

I do agree that it’s probably best to toss this batch and start over.

 

[DeeAnna]

Oh, gosh, yes, if that was the case, there would be a major amount of citrate in the soap. I now get where you were coming from!

 

[AliOop]

Oh, gosh, yes, if that was the case, there would be a major amount of citrate in the soap. I now get where you were coming from!

Yes, if I'd re-read her post and then my first response, I would have cleared up my own confusion. As always, thanks for your help!

 

[linne1gi]

I also add several additives to my soap. I’ve done extensive testing however and found these to be really beneficial. I add powdered sugar (or sorbitol if I can get it), Mulberry Silk, salt,, Edta and citric acid to most of my soap. I also add additional NaOH but I do the math ahead of time and I don’t just throw in random amounts! Sometimes I add Colloidal Oatmeal or a powdered milk but not always. My advice is to test out small batches to find what you like and research amounts.

 

[sang90]

Hi, sorry to bring up an old thread. Do we need to add extra water as well to compensate the extra NaoH added to the batch, that had been added to compensate the citric acid??

For example : do we need to add extra water of approx 12g for extra 6g Naoh added to the batch to compensate 10g citric acid??

 

[linne1gi]

Hi, sorry to bring up an old thread. Do we need to add extra water as well to compensate the extra NaoH added to the batch, that had been added to compensate the citric acid??

For example : do we need to add extra water of approx 12g for extra 6g Naoh added to the batch to compensate 10g citric acid??

That depends. I soap at a 2:1 water to lye ratio. My master batched lye is at a 1:1 ratio. So I add my citric and extra lye to my 2nd portion of water. Lye needs at least it own weight in water to fully dissolve. So if you are using a 1:1 ratio to soap with, then you need extra water. Most people don’t do a water discount this severe though.

 

[Becky1024]

Hi, sorry to bring up an old thread. Do we need to add extra water as well to compensate the extra NaoH added to the batch, that had been added to compensate the citric acid??

For example : do we need to add extra water of approx 12g for extra 6g Naoh added to the batch to compensate 10g citric acid??

You do not need to add extra water. You do need to add extra NaOH since the citric acid will react with a portion of the NaOH to form sodium citrate. If you don't add extra NaOH your super fat percentage will be higher. The best place I've found to explain using citric acid and how to calculate the extra NaOH is on the Classic Bells website. Here's the link:

https://classicbells.com/soap/citri...uSlCetU89hsG3VGTm8JY6EEUokbK3v5SQj2KNX0-c5J0U