Sunflower liquid soap help

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naranbaatar

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hi yesterday i tried making liquid soap from sunflower oil

sunflower oil 900ml
KOH (potassium hydroxide 82%) 192 g
disolved the KOH in 317 ml water

heated the sunflower to 137F and added the lye

at start i mixed it with blender for 30 mins till the fat and lye wont saparate

after 6hrs and every 20mins stiring in low heat the soap is very petrolium jelly like

the problem when i add 1 tea spoon of it in to 2x amount of water i get milk like substance some what resembling soap but very bad at buble should i cook more? i turned the heat off and it is still petrolium jelly like even after 17hrs

here are the photos
 

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Last edited by a moderator:
It looks like you have the right consistency for your soap paste.

When you dilute the paste start with 1 part paste and .75 part water, by weight. For testing 100g of soap and 75g of water (roughly) should be a good start. If the soap doesn’t dissolve after 24 hours add a small portion of water and repeat until the paste is all dissolved, test for bubbles then. My guess is that you added too much water and over diluted the paste a bit. It will take some trial and error to figure out the sweet spot (take notes so you can repeat it later on with the rest of the paste)
 
It looks like you have the right consistency for your soap paste.

When you dilute the paste start with 1 part paste and .75 part water, by weight. For testing 100g of soap and 75g of water (roughly) should be a good start. If the soap doesn’t dissolve after 24 hours add a small portion of water and repeat until the paste is all dissolved, test for bubbles then. My guess is that you added too much water and over diluted the paste a bit. It will take some trial and error to figure out the sweet spot (take notes so you can repeat it later on with the rest of the paste)
many thanks i will try for 100g of soap
 
Soap made with only sunflower oil will not bubble very well. It is still soap. It will still clean. But it will not make much lather.

My guess is the soap is milky after dilution due to the 18% impurities in your KOH. This is just a guess, but I cannot think of any other reason for your problem. The impurities may settle out if you let the diluted soap sit quietly.

Do NOT measure ingredients by volume for making soap. 900 mL is not 900 grams! I believe your recipe is correct based on my estimates of the oil weight, but it is not wise to measure by volume.
 
Soap made with only sunflower oil will not bubble very well. It is still soap. It will still clean. But it will not make much lather.

My guess is the soap is milky after dilution due to the 18% impurities in your KOH. This is just a guess, but I cannot think of any other reason for your problem. The impurities may settle out if you let the diluted soap sit quietly.

Do NOT measure ingredients by volume for making soap. 900 mL is not 900 grams! I believe your recipe is correct based on my estimates of the oil weight, but it is not wise to measure by volume.
you are correct milky color is from the 18% impurity in my lye, and again you are correct in the bubbling it wont bubble so much as i wanted, i started with 10 to 7 ratio of water and ended up with 10 to 10.1 is correct way of adding water for perfect thickness

next experiment what oil should i add to sunflower to make more bubbles?
 
For more lather, you want to include fats that are higher in myristic and lauric acid. Normally I would say to use coconut oil to get this, but I do not know what fats you have available to you. Check the information here: http://soapee.com/oils and look for fats higher in those two fatty acids.
 
i have access to sheep lard all kinds of beef fat all kinds of 2 hump camel fat, horse fat, goat fat and rapeseed oil soybean oil for cheap price, but coconut oil and olive oil are kind a expensive 20% more than in US to be excact, other oils kind a hard to access might cost 40% more soo thats why i want lesser use of them exotic oils

for fragrance it might cost me nothing may be 0.40cent for the electricy for getting 1 oz of almost any blume or wood that grow here
 
Last edited by a moderator:
"...other oils kind a hard to access..."

That's why I gave you a link to a list of fats and their fatty acid profiles. You might find the answers that will work better for you by looking at that list.

edit:
For horse fat, look for horse oil.
For goat, sheep and beef fat, look for the name tallow and then look for the specific type of tallow. For example, beef fat --> tallow, beef.

For camel fat, you may want to contact Carolyn (look for member name cmzaha on this forum). She has been using camel fat and camel milk in her soap and may have some tips for you.
 
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bad news. sunflower liquid soap is not stable

going to try beef fat, will try mixing these 2 up, will try pure lets see what comes up
 
I am so jealous I pay a fortune for Camel Hump Fat. The KOH Sap for Hump fat is .202 NaOh .144 If I were you I would make some tallow single oil liquid soap paste, dilute and mix some with your Sunflower liquid soap. A few years ago I made several single oil LS soaps so I could mix them until I got the feel and bubbles I wanted. I did make single oil CO also. If you could source so CO maybe make a small batch of LS to mix some with your sunflower. Siphon off the clear sunflower ls and either discard the cloudy or add it as liquid to cp soap. In place of CO can you source Palm Kernel Oil any less costly than the CO? If so it also make a bubble soap and can make it as a single oil LS then mix it in the Sunflower
 
I'm not sure what you mean by "not stable". Is it rancid? Or is it separating? If the first, then I'm not surprised if it's high linoleic (regular) sunflower. If the second, your method is at fault, not the fat.

Can you explain in more detail?
 
hi yesterday i tried making liquid soap from sunflower oil

sunflower oil 900ml
KOH (potassium hydroxide 82%) 192 g
disolved the KOH in 317 ml water

heated the sunflower to 137F and added the lye

at start i mixed it with blender for 30 mins till the fat and lye wont saparate

after 6hrs and every 20mins stiring in low heat the soap is very petrolium jelly like

the problem when i add 1 tea spoon of it in to 2x amount of water i get milk like substance some what resembling soap but very bad at buble should i cook more? i turned the heat off and it is still petrolium jelly like even after 17hrs

here are the photos
Concentration of alkali is most important in making soap. The problem is due to unsaponified oil. Try using 18% alkali.
 
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