Stearic acid and baking soda

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herackonchiasa

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I researched the reaction between baking soda and stearic acid and it turns out sodium stearate , co2 & h2o is produced ! I was wondering if anyone has ever made soap (sodium stearate) purposefully from this ? The stoichiometry is pretty straight forward with a 1:1 molar ratio . But I feel like if this was a worthwhile soaking method there'd be more material on it. Has anyone ever done it?
 
I was also thinking if it turned out successful then superfatting and HPing the soap would do the job
 
Why would you want this? Maybe I am missing something but I don't believe sodium stearate has anything to do with baking soda. Sodium stearate is just saponified stearic acid whether from tallow or stearic acid or kokum butter. So I would say yes I have purposefully made sodium stearate almost every time I make soap, but baking soda has nothing to do with it. Again, I might be missing something.

Also as far as I know baking soda can only be added to soap after the initial chemical reaction takes place, by rebatching.
 
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Well, I had some left over stearic acid from making liquid soap, and I was wondering what the reaction would be between pure stearic acid and baking soda. A random thought. But not so random is the actual reaction. Baking soda plus stearic acid is sodium stearate, carbon dioxide and water. And I thought hmm, really ? So I felt it would be absolutely possible to make soap with baking soda, and was wondering whether anyone has ever done this and if not , I guess ill be the first. But I was looking to maybe draw from the knowledge of more experienced soapers,
 
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Megan -- The soap queen thing was about adding baking soda to a ready made soap to supposedly lower the pH. And if you remember the followup posts, the results were not particularly good - the soap ended up "breaking" into fatty acids.

What is being discussed here is quite a different proposal -- the OP wants to use baking soda as the lye to saponify fats.

Yes, it can be done, but not as efficiently as with a stronger base (NaOH, KOH). No, I haven't done it. Have fun and let us know the results!
 
Thanks for clearing that up. I guess I misunderstood what was going on. I also didn't realize that baking soda was a strong enough alkali to saponify.
 
It's not a very strong alkali, so you're perfectly correct on that, Megan! :) Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3) is called an "amphoteric" compound, meaning it sometimes acts like a weak alkali and sometimes like a weak acid, depending on the circumstances. Just because the chemistry says baking soda can saponify fats doesn't necessarily mean it is especially efficient or practical to do so. It harks back to the days before commercially produced NaOH was available and soap makers had to react sodium carbonate (soda ash, washing soda, Na2CO3) with slaked lime (CaOH2) to make their lye.
 
DeeAnna said:
Megan -- The soap queen thing was about adding baking soda to a ready made soap to supposedly lower the pH. And if you remember the followup posts, the results were not particularly good - the soap ended up "breaking" into fatty acids.

What is being discussed here is quite a different proposal -- the OP wants to use baking soda as the lye to saponify fats.

Yes, it can be done, but not as efficiently as with a stronger base (NaOH, KOH). No, I haven't done it. Have fun and let us know the results!
Click to expand...

Yes , that is EXACTLY what I am asking ! Thank you so much deeanna for your input ! Im definitely going to experiment with it in a Very small batch . I was so curious about this because I render tallow. And one method of doing that is to add a little baking soda for the smell. Needless to say when I did more research I found out that many of the bubbles resulting from that rendering technique is in fact soap !
But yeah , haha thanks so much. Ill be posting back on this thread for the updates !
 
I made an after shave lotion with this method! It comes out more like the consistancy for a lotion base! I made witch hazel after shave lotion!
 

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