Uses
According to an ancient Roman legend, soap got its name from Mount
Sapo, where animals were sacrificed. Rain washed a mixture of melted
animal fat or tallow and wood ashes down into the clay soil along the Tiber River. It was found that this clay mixture cleaned the washed
clothes with much less effort.
The term soap is a class name for the sodium and potassium salts of
fatty acids. These fatty acids were found in animal fats and in plant oils
such as coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, castor oil, or cottonseed oil.
Soaps are manufactured from a renewable source. The triglycerides (or
triesters of fatty acids) are the raw material for the production of soap.
The triglycerides occur widely in plants and animals.
Tallow and coconut oil are the principal fatty materials in soap making
in the United States. The palm oils, palm kernel oil, and their derivatives
are used in soap manufacture in many other parts of the world.
Greases, obtained from hogs and smaller domestic animals, are the
second most important source of glycerides of fatty acids. Coconut oil has
long been important in soap making. The soap from coconut oil is firm
and lathers well. It contains a large amount of the desired glycerides of
lauric and myristic acids [1-6].
The soap maker represents one of the larger consumers of chemicals,
especially caustic soda, salt, soda ash, caustic potash, sodium silicate,
sodium bicarbonate, and trisodium phosphate. Builders are inorganic
chemicals added to soap. In particular, tetrasodium pyrophosphate and
sodium tripolyphosphate were usually effective soap builders [1-6].
