Why can't you use Fryer Fats?

[Dave D]

Lucky7's,

Don't waste time boiling the oil with water. The temperature will only rise to 212F until the water is mostly gone, and boiling large amounts of water under oil can cause steam explosions that are messy and dangerous. Boiling oil with water also causes hydrolysis that will likely result in the loss of some glycerol.

You can:
1. Centrifuge, or fine filter the oil to remove sediments.
2. Gently water wash the oil to remove any remaining water soluble contaminants (avoid creating an emulsion).
3. Heat the wet oil to 350F to ensure all is dead that remains.
4. Conduct a Sap test to determine the amount of caustic necessary.
5. Make your soap using your determined Sap value.

Edit:
Forgot to add,
Refining glycerol/glycerin, is done using vacuum distillation due to it's boiling point being it's decomposition temperature.
My appologies for jumping in with advice after just joining, I hope no one takes offense.

 

[carebear]

good information - thanks!

 

[Beckis19]

Personally, I think using fryer oil for some personal batches would be an interesting experiment. I just might look into how to clean oils and try making a laundry soap from it the next time I warm up the home fryer.

But I'm thinking if you're not 100% sure what oils you're using AND you want to sell it, you may run into problems if someone is allergic to one of the oils in there. While most places don't use known allergenis oils like peanut anymore, there is always the chance that someone could be allergic to SOMETHING in there. I don't know how many people are tough-allergic to blueberries, etc, but I know that my local donought shop incorporates blueberries and other things into some of their batters. If you don't know what's in there, you can't list it.

I'd say slow down, LEARN how to make soap using new oils first, work on a few small batches using cleaned frier oil if that's still the way you want to go, save some of the fryer soap, wait at LEAST a year to make sure they don't get DOS or otherwise go rancid, THEN go ahead with larger-scale productions. From seemingly no experience to about 2,000 or so pound batches is a pretty big leap, and quite an investment in materials!

IMHO, I'd go with the PP and say save the frier oil for biodiesel. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 5-10 years that business emerge that specialize in collecting used frier oils and produce biodiesel with it. Then you may have to start paying for the used oils, unless you own or have strong connections to the aforementioned donought shop.

Plus, if you want to get oils on the cheap, if you're up to puting in the effort into cleaning fryer oils, I'd suggest you hit up grocery stores for leftover beef tallow instead, unless you want veggie soap. At least with the tallow it wouldn't have been abused. Also, most fryer oils are liquid at room temp, you'd need to buy some coconut and/or palm and/or tallow or lard anyway to keep the bar from being too soft.

I don't know that most single-oil soaps other than olive oil, or the veggie blends used in friers would make a good sellable-quality bar by themselves, even using new oils.

If you get into the hobby of soapmaking, decide you like it, and want to go that big with the batches, I'd say that you could probably find somewhere to buy new oils by the pallate that could get you close to your pricing goal. If you want to go with cheap oils, skip the olive and use sunflower, soybean, etc as filler oils along with coconut and palm, or tallow. At least that way you could get consistent, predictable resuts.

Aside from allergy issues, I couldn't think of anything worse than someone who buys a bunch of soap wholesale from you have one of their batches go bad quickly... NOT good PR.