Procedure for saltint out?

[bakmthiscl]

I've been making my own soap for a few years now. This is for my use only, from waste grease and oil. It's ugly to look at but very good soap.

Recently I read about "salting out" soap, and tried it. The procedure I used was to grate the bar soap, dissolve it in minimum water, mixing to form thick, heavy suds, then to add either salt directly or saturated brine. The suds condense into beautiful white granular soap, leaving all the ugliness in the water.

I find I can rinse this soap with water to remove some of the excess salt, but I can't seem to get rid of all the excess soap. Nor can I get the granular soap back into a bar form. I have been able to make a thick paste of it, which could be dispensed from a bottle, but I happen to prefer bar soap.

I'd be interested whether anyone has experience or information they can share to improve what I'm doing.

 

[jbarad]

Are you talking about making a salt bar ?

To make a salt bar you just add equal amount of salt by weight to your raw saop batter before you pour into molds.

If you have 2 pounds of oils, use 2 pounds of salt - adjust to your preference.

ETA : I googled salting out and I guess it's something completely different than what I thought you meant.

Here's a link I found about it : http://www.chem.latech.edu/~deddy/chem1 ... oap122.htm

 

[carebear]

I've not tried it myself, but be aware that along with the ugliness you are leaving the glycerin behind in the salty water.

This method is used when you don't know how much lye you need (or have) as the excess lye is also left with the lovely glycerin.

But for nicer soap you want that glycerin so you are better off rendering your fat to clean it if that's what you want to use.

 

[bakmthiscl]

Cleaning up Ugly Soap

Well, I realized on rereading my original posting that I'd made an error that confuses the question a LOT. The following offset section has been corrected:

==============
I've been making my own soap for a few years now, from waste grease and oil. This is for my use only. It's ugly to look at but it's very good soap.

Recently I read about "salting out" soap, and tried it. The procedure I used was to grate the bar soap, dissolve it in minimum water, mixing to form thick, heavy suds, then to add either salt directly or saturated brine. The suds condense into beautiful white granular soap, leaving all the ugliness in the water.

I find I can rinse this soap with water to remove some of the excess salt, but I can't seem to get rid of all the excess salt. Nor can I get the granular soap back into a bar form. I have been able to make a thick paste of it, which could be dispensed from a bottle, but I happen to prefer bar soap.

I'd be interested whether anyone has experience or information they can share to improve what I'm doing.
=====================

Note that I am not talking about making a salt bar, whatever that is. The salt is added to the soap slurry to precipitate the soap and leave the crud in the water. The color change is remarkable -- from a yellow to a pure white, the corresponding brownish crud coming off in the rinse water.

I am aware that this procedure leaves the glycerin behind, but so what? If you're washing your hands with soap, the glycerin does you no good. It will wash away with the rinse water there as well. (Actually, I don't know why anyone would want a syrupy sugar, like glycerin, on one's hands in the first place, but to each his own.) I seriously doubt one could "glue" the granular soap back together by adding back glycerin, but if that WOULD work, I'd like to know it.

(I do not need to remove lye. I calculate the amount of lye to use and have never had an excess of lye in my soap.)

Bear in mind that this is functional soap, not for pretty. I don't use colors or fragrances or other additives in it. It is strictly for use in washing, where it performs admirably. But I would like to get the yellow crud out of it if I can.

 

[judymoody]

I'm with carebear. While I have never tried your method it seems like it would be a whole lot easier to render your waste fat first, strain out the impurities, and then use your cleaned and purified fat to make CP soap. The grating, salting, boiling, straining, and attempting to reconstitute sounds like too much work to me.

I have rendered fat and it's fairly easy to do.

 

[Fragola]

You're washing your soap

I never tried this myself, but I did bump into salty soap few times and I have few thoughts:

- you don't need glycerine to glue soap together
- melting it may work
- if you have too much salt that has not been rinsed away, it may not work
- applying pressure may work (in fact, I was half-able to glue salted soap together - I only tried it once but it seemed like I am on the right track)

By the way, industrially manufactured soaps are often made from soap powder that's being pressed into bars.