Masterbatch, dual lye and Vinegar

DeeAnna said:

Acidity is by weight.

I don't think I'd say "willy nilly" exactly. Sometimes it takes awhile to fully understand a problem -- people have to "feel" their way into the solution. That's what I'm trying to encourage with my estimates.

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DeeAnna said:

"... I was assuming that you take, say, 1000g of vinegar and neutralize it to make a mix of "water" and sodium acetate...."

But, with respect, that's not what PJ did -- she said she added 96 g NaOH to 100 g vinegar.

"...Would you not be able to make a 45% solution with that?..."

You'd have to back-calculate how much of that 96 g of NaOH she added was converted to acetate. That will tell you how much of that NaOH is still available for making soap. In other words, is the NaOH consumed by the acetate reaction 48.5% - 45% = 3.5%? If so, then yes, you can make this solution the way she did it and get an effective 45% NaOH solution for making soap.

Most people, and I imagine PJ is among those, won't want to look at the problem in two steps - (1) neutralize the vinegar with NaOH and (2) add extra NaOH for their soap making masterbatch. They will want to measure vinegar, measure NaOH, mix the two, and know the % effective NaOH available for soaping, which is something less than the % total NaOH added to the mixture. The formula can be adjusted to spit out that number.

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BrewerGeorge said:

When the bottle says 5% vinegar, is that by weight or by volume?

Everyone seems to be adding and subtracting percentages willy-nilly, which is always risky when working with weighed solutions.

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The Efficacious Gentleman said:

Open excel (((don't actually enter the speech marks, they are just there to show what you need to enter)))

In cell a1 put "45" and in b1 put "solution strength"

In a2 put "100" and in b2 put "required NaOH"

In a3 put "=(100/a1)*a2"

The = is needed to let excel know that a formula is coming.

You can now enter your solution strength in a1, your required lye in a2 and then in a3 it will tell you how much total solution you need

You might want to adjust the rounding or just round the solution amount yourself to get a more workable number.

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