Dehydrator for saponification - NOT cure time :)

[Sierra425]

Hi everyone,
I was wondering if anyone has used a dehydrator for saponification? Not to reduce cure time.
I have used an oven at 60 degrees celsius for 4 hours and it works well but my reasoning for a dehydrator is that it can maintain temperature for a given time with less energy consumption. I don't have a dehydrator already so in order to test it I would have to buy one and then it will be useless to me if it doesn't work.

Thank you!

 

[TashaBird]

That’s an interesting idea! I have a dehydrator, but I’ve been using a heating pad. Maybe I’ll try it. My dehydrator has a fan. Would the moving air be an issue?

 

[cmzaha]

Dehydrators will very often melt the soap, due to the heat and are for drying food or botanicals. Saponification has nothing to do with the drying process of soap but it is the lye reacting with the fatty acids creating soap, which process is usually complete in 72 hrs at most. During cure time your soap usually dries out enough for use unless you use an excessive amount of liquid. Save your money if you have no other use for a dehydrator.

 

[Anstarx]

My oven has various low temp setting. I poped a loaf in there and forget I left the temperature on 70 C and it melted the soap into a gooey mess. The dehydrator I see around here mostly works around 60-70C so it could melt the soap. Other than the heating part, a dehydrator is basically a glorified fan.
I agree with cmzaha that dehydrator won't help that much. As long as you mix the ingredients correctly it will saponify and since you will need to cure the soap to use it anyway I don't see the point of adding a step. If you want to speed up sponification in order to unmold faster, the regular CPOP method only require the oven to reach its lowest temp before turning off. I'd say a heating pad would be more efficient cost wise.

 

[shunt2011]

Hi everyone,
I was wondering if anyone has used a dehydrator for saponification? Not to reduce cure time.
I have used an oven at 60 degrees celsius for 4 hours and it works well but my reasoning for a dehydrator is that it can maintain temperature for a given time with less energy consumption. I don't have a dehydrator already so in order to test it I would have to buy one and then it will be useless to me if it doesn't work.

Thank you!

You don't leave the oven on. Just warm it up and turn it off when you put the soap in. The heat maintained in the oven is more than adequate.

 

[artemis]

I was wondering if anyone has used a dehydrator for saponification? Not to reduce cure time.

It's early for me, but I don't understand. Saponification will happen with or without added heat. It's just the chemical reaction. Do you mean to encourage gel?

 

[DeeAnna]

The OP is suggesting using a dehydrator as a heat source for CPOP, not as a way to dry after saponification.

A dehydrator would certainly work as a heat source. What you might not realize, however, is heating the saponifying soap for 4 hours at 140F / 60C is overkill.

That high of a temperature for that long will certainly warm the entire mass of soap to its gel temperature, but that's not necessary. All you need to do is to supply enough energy to warm the outer surface of the soap, not heat the entire thing. The saponification reaction will warm the center of the soap mass without our help.

People used to use this long-heating method of CPOP when I first started to make soap, but this approach causes more problems than it's worth so the method has been modified. The current method is to preheat the oven to 140F / 60C, turn the oven off, and put the molded soap in. No further heating is required.

Since a dehydrator is designed to have more air flow and less insulation than an oven, it will likely consume more energy than using an oven with the current method.