Wrong hydroxide used for Shampoo bar... ruined?

[Green Girl]

I have just made a large batch of shampoo Bars I accidentally used Potassium instead of sodium hydroxide. Can this be saved?

 

[AliOop]

The KOH normally makes a soft, somewhat sticky paste, not anything that can be made into hard bars.

You could dilute this into liquid soap that you use to wash your hair, but it probably has a large superfat (or at least, more than the 2% or so that is typical for LS). Unless you add a solubilizer like PS80, this SF is likely to separate from the rest of the diluted soap, and will appear as a layer of oil on top of the soap, or a white, kind of waxy foam.

Another option would be to make a new batch of shampoo bars with the correct lye, and mix in enough of the heated and softened paste to make dual-lye bars. Depending on how large of a batch you made, it will take you awhile to use up all the paste this way.

 

[DeeAnna]

I agree with most of what Ali said -- good stuff there.

If you used KOH to make a recipe based on using NaOH, the superfat in this soap is going to be very high -- in the neighborhood of about 40% superfat. That's far too high for use on hair.

You haven't mentioned how experienced you are as a soap maker. If you're a beginner, the difficulty to fix this batch is honestly not worth the time and trouble. I'd discard this batch and try again. If you're an experienced soap maker, it still might not be worth the trouble to fix.

 

[AliOop]

If you used KOH to make a recipe based on using NaOH, the superfat in this soap is going to be very high -- in the neighborhood of about 40% superfat. That's far too high for use on hair.

I completely forgot about that part! With that in mind, I would probably toss it, because that extra bit of math makes my head hurt.