Increase soap cleaning number

[user 57761]

Hi all, I hope you are all having a good week!

If making laundry bar soap from beef tallow, the cleaning number is generally too low for the application. Is there an additive that can be used to increase the cleaning properties of tallow soap? I am aware that adding other oils will achieve this, however, tallow is the most available oil in our market, so I need to work with that as the base for most of the products I will make.

Thanks for your help and time!

 

[AliOop]

Well hello again! I promise I am not stalking you just perusing the forum before work.

Tallow is a wonderful oil for soap! It will get the clothes clean from dirt, even with a low cleansing number. All soap will clean, even with a 0 cleansing number, which really refers to how well any oil or grease is removed.

If you want to raise the cleansing number so that you can remove more oils and grease from the clothes, the best choice would be coconut oil (CO). Do you have access to that? What about palm kernel oil (not palm oil aka palm fruit oil)? You mentioned in the other thread that palms were not local, so I’m guessing PKO won’t be available for you. CO and PKO are the two high cleansing oils used most often for making soap. To my knowledge, tallow is the very distant third.

If neither CO or PKO are available to you, you could try dissolving some borax powder in hot water and adding that to the soap. Is borax (sodium borate) available to you? Is so, we can talk more about that. If not, maybe someone else will have a suggestion to increase the cleansing value for you.

 

[user 57761]

Well hello again! I promise I am not stalking you just perusing the forum before work.

Tallow is a wonderful oil for soap! It will get the clothes clean from dirt, even with a low cleansing number. All soap will clean, even with a 0 cleansing number, which really refers to how well any oil or grease is removed.

If you want to raise the cleansing number so that you can remove more oils and grease from the clothes, the best choice would be coconut oil (CO). Do you have access to that? What about palm kernel oil (not palm oil aka palm fruit oil)? You mentioned in the other thread that palms were not local, so I’m guessing PKO won’t be available for you. CO and PKO are the two high cleansing oils used most often for making soap. To my knowledge, tallow is the very distant third.

If neither CO or PKO are available to you, you could try dissolving some borax powder in hot water and adding that to the soap. Is borax (sodium borate) available to you? Is so, we can talk more about that. If not, maybe someone else will have a suggestion to increase the cleansing value for you.

AliOop, as long as you are giving me the good stuff like you have been doing you can stalk me to your heart's content! Zimbabwe has no palm or coconut trees so PLO, PO, and CO are not indigenous and therefore those oils are incredibly expensive here. I am however happy to receive your thoughts on the cleaning ability of tallow as there is a lot of that here. I am also very grateful for your suggestion about borax and will try that in a small batch to do a comparison (tallow with borax and without). Once I have done that I will report back with the findings. Do you have any idea about the rate and application of sodium borate in CP? From research, it seems to be 8 to 8.5% of total oil, dissolved in a small amount of boiled water (taken from lye solution water) and then added at trace.

Thanks for your time and help, very kind and I hope you have an excellent weekend.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

And also look to keep the superfat % as low as you safely can

 

[user 57761]

And also look to keep the superfat % as low as you safely can

Awesome user name! Many thanks for your advice, Craig. I will experiment with a few options and will update on results when done.

 

[AliOop]

If you do a search here on SMF for "Earlene's Blacksmith Soap," you can follow her directions and percentages for adding borax to soap. I use it in my gardener's/mechanic's soap, and it does an amazing job of removing both grease and dirt.

 

[TheGecko]

If making laundry bar soap from beef tallow, the cleaning number is generally too low for the application. Is there an additive that can be used to increase the cleaning properties of tallow soap? I am aware that adding other oils will achieve this, however, tallow is the most available oil in our market, so I need to work with that as the base for most of the products I will make.

Thanks for your help and time!

I second @AliOop that 'soap' is naturally 'cleansing' (and antibacterial). Even with a value of 0, soap will still get you clean.

Oils that would contribute a higher 'cleansing' value would be those containing Lauric Acid...like Babassu, Palm Kernel and Coconut Oils, which sadly you have indicated are not affordably available to you. Coconut Milk and Goat Milk also contain Lauric Acid so you could do a 100% Distilled Water replacement and if Goat Milk is not available, Goat Milk Powder is another option.

In the days before there were stain removers and fancy laundry soaps...grandma used to rub bar soap on stains and oily patches.