Facts about Soap
The most popular process for handmade soaps today is the cold process, where oils such as olive oil are reacted with lye.
The term "Castile soap" is also sometimes applied to soaps with a mix of oils, but a high percentage of olive oil.
The use of thick liquid soap has also become widespread, especially from soap dispensers in public washrooms.
The Babylonians used clay cylinders containing a soap-like substance, dating from 2800 B.C.E.
After the insulation period, the soap is firm enough to be removed from the mold and cut into bars.
At this time, it is safe to use the soap since saponification is complete.
Manufactured bar soaps first became available in the late nineteenth century, and advertising campaigns in Europe and the United States helped to increase popular awareness of the relationship between cleanliness and health.
Soap can also be made of vegetable oils, such as palm oil, and the product is typically softer.
Excess unreacted lye in the soap will result in a very high pH and can burn or irritate skin.
Sodium tallowate, a common ingredient in many soaps, is derived from rendered beef fat.
The soap is then passed through one or more additional refiners to further plasticize the soap mass.
Conversely, the term soap is often used in a broader sense to include a variety of cleaning agents (such as "laundry soap").
Robert Spear Hudson began manufacturing a soap powder in 1837, initially by grinding the soap with a mortar and pestle.
The traditional name "soaper," for a soap maker, is still used by those who make soap as a hobby.
According to one report, virtually all the large underground fresh-water supplies in Uzbekistan are polluted by industrial and chemical wastes.
Washing agents do not contain soap for cleaning fabric, but for reducing foam.
The soapy water destroys the scent the ants were following to get to food.
Under such circumstances, animal sacrifices would not have included enough fat to make much soap.
A twelfth-century Islamic document describes the process of soap production.
A nature-friendly way of interrupting an ant trail is to pour soapy water on the trail.
Some soap makers use the "melt and pour" process, where a pre-made soap base is melted and poured into individual molds.
William Hesketh Lever and his brother James bought a small soap works in Warrington in 1885 and founded what became one of the largest soap businesses, now called Unilever.
Soap usually comes in a solid, molded form, called a bar, based on its typical shape.
The common process of purifying soap involves removal of sodium chloride, sodium hydroxide, and glycerol.
When fat is reacted with potassium hydroxide, the product is a soap that is either soft or liquid.
When applied to a soiled surface, soapy water effectively holds particles in suspension, which can then be rinsed off with clean water.
From the refiner the soap passes over a roller mill (French milling or hard milling) in a manner similar to calendering paper or plastic or to making chocolate liquor.
indicates that ancient Egyptians bathed regularly and combined animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to create a soap-like substance.
Many newer materials are used for exfoliating soaps which are effective but do not have the sharp edges and poor size distribution of pumice.
A soap is a cleaning agent that is composed of one or more salts of fatty acids.
When fat (or oil) is reacted with lye (sodium hydroxide), the product is a hard soap.
The dry soap (approximately 6-12 percent moisture) is then compacted into small pellets.
Most soap makers formulate their recipes with a 4-10 percent discount of lye so that all of the lye is reacted and that excess fat is left for skin conditioning benefits.
In 1789, Haydn developed another friendship with Maria Anna von Genzinger (1750–1793), the wife of Prince Nicolaus's personal physician in Vienna.
The lands of Medieval Spain were a leading soapmaker by 800, and soapmaking began in the Kingdom of England about 1200.
Each oil chosen by the soap maker has unique characteristics that provide different qualities to handmade soaps including mildness, lathering and hardness.
Some soapers also practice other processes, such as the historical hot process, and make special soaps such as clear soap (glycerin soap).
The mass is then discharged from the mixer into a refiner which, by means of an auger, forces the soap through a fine wire screen.
After saponification, the soap is sometimes precipitated from the solution by adding salt, and the excess liquid drained off.
Egyptian documents mention that a soap-like substance was used in the preparation of wool for weaving.
The ancient Romans were generally ignorant of soap's detergent properties and made use of the strigil to scrape dirt and sweat from the body.
Until the Industrial Revolution, soap-making was done on a small scale and the product was rough.
Soap pellets are combined with fragrances and other materials and blended to homogeneity in an amalgamator (mixer).
By the 1950s, soap had gained public acceptance as an instrument of personal hygiene.
By the thirteenth century, the manufacture of soap in the Islamic world had become virtually industrialized, with sources in Nablus, Fes, Damascus, and Aleppo.
The earliest known use of a natural, soap-like material was the powder of nuts from the Reeta (Sapindus) tree, a powder used by Indians since antiquity.
Castile soap, made from olive oil, was produced in Europe as early as the sixteenth century.
A formula for soap—consisting of water, alkali, and cassia oil—was written on a Babylonian clay tablet around 2200 B.C.E.