Name:

Preparation of Soap
*Procedure:
1. Weigh a small beaker (150 mL or 250 mL). Enter the weight here:

2. Add 30.0 g to the weight of the beaker. Enter the new weight here:
This is how much your beaker should weigh when you add 30.0 g of coconut oil to it.

3. Set the weight on your scale to the value you calculated in #2. The scale will not be balanced!

4. Put your beaker on the scale and add coconut oil until the scale is balanced. When the scale is
balanced, you will have added 30.0 g of coconut oil.

5. Use a grease pencil to write your initials on your beaker.

6. Place your beaker in a water bath set at 39oC. Make sure the beaker is stable and will not tip over.
The oil melts when the bath is between 37-41oC. [For good quality of the product, it is very important
that the mixture not get too hot.l

7. This amount of coconut oil requires 268 mg NaOH per gram of oil to completely saponify (to make the
soap from the oil). Therefore, you will need B040mg or 8.04 grams of NaOH for the 30 grams of oil.
The Sodium hydroxide we use is a 50o/o solution (19.1 M NaOH ) so that when the solution weighs 16
grams, B grams of it is NaOH (50o/o). Note: This is an extremely strong concentration of the
base so make sure you are wearing your safety goggles and clean up any spills. The NaOH
can react with the fats in your body to make soap...and that's not a good thing!

B. Once the coconut oil in your beaker melts completely, ask your instructor to pour 10.4 mL of 50o/o
w/w NaOH (16 g of solution) into the beaker containing the oil.

9. Stir the solution as it thickens. Stir the mixture every 5 minutes. The mixture will start looking
opaque and start to thicken between 30 min. to an hour.

10. When the mixture has the consistency of pudding, take it out of the water bath. Add 2-3 drops of oil-
based fragrance, if desired, and stir. Then pour the mixture into a ffeflon-coatedl mini-muffin pan as
a mold. This recipe fills up two cups of the muffin pan (one for each paftner).

11. Leave it in the pan overnight for the soap to harden on the surface. The next day, remove the soap,
inverting it into a suitable plastic dish. Be careful not to touch any of the wet surfaces thus
exposed, since they are wet with the strong NaOH solution.

12. This type of soap needs to mature to lose its alkalinity (pH12 when new). Use only after at least 3
week of "curingo, or when pH level is around 8.

Adapted from hftp://wwwjozie.neVJF/HS_Chem/LaboratorylLaboratorylLBl9Coconutsoap.doc

* This recipe is derived from a Spanish language soapmake/s book and then adjusted to lab
glassware and chemicals in 2001 by Juan Cueva who is from Ecuador (thus the Spanish).