Here's a potentially important chemistry question.
Given a soap with no excess lye or oil, if you add a superfat of free fatty acids to it in some proportion, apparently you would come back sometime later and discover that the soap no longer contains the same proportion of FFAs that you put into it. They will have migrated according to the overall composition of the soap, such that some of the FFAs you added will have become soap, while fatty acids that were originally soap will have become FFAs.
The question is, will the same thing happen with triglycerides added to the soap instead of free fatty acids? I think that's liable to be a different matter, but I'm not certain. If the same migration happened with added oils, you wouldn't be able to control the composition of your superfat even with HP.
This question was inspired by a patent application, the relevant portion of which is below. Regardless of the answer, as a soap geek I found this interesting and maybe others will as well.
Given a soap with no excess lye or oil, if you add a superfat of free fatty acids to it in some proportion, apparently you would come back sometime later and discover that the soap no longer contains the same proportion of FFAs that you put into it. They will have migrated according to the overall composition of the soap, such that some of the FFAs you added will have become soap, while fatty acids that were originally soap will have become FFAs.
The question is, will the same thing happen with triglycerides added to the soap instead of free fatty acids? I think that's liable to be a different matter, but I'm not certain. If the same migration happened with added oils, you wouldn't be able to control the composition of your superfat even with HP.
This question was inspired by a patent application, the relevant portion of which is below. Regardless of the answer, as a soap geek I found this interesting and maybe others will as well.