Liquid soap, glycerin method, huge fail at start

[traderbren]

I got all suited up, measured everything, had my room temp glycerin in a pot, added my KOH, turned the heat on, stirred, and kept stirring. My solution went from semi-liquid to crunchy, and then it started burning. So I guess I got it too hot.


What is the best way to dispose of this? Dig a hole in the ground near our ash pile and bury it?

Has this ever happened to anyone else? I'm now low on glycerin so will be using distilled water for my next try.

 

[Obsidian]

I would probably try to dilute it with a lot of water then pour it down the drain. Maybe a 5 gallon bucket of cold water to dilute it.

If you try this again, heat your glycerin before adding your KOH.

 

[traderbren]

Thanks Obsidian. I added a lot of water, but hubs was concerned about it going down the drain so he asked me to dump it on our ash pile.

I will try the glycerin again at some point once I get more and I get one successful liquid soap batch under my belt, and I think I'll try heating the glycerin first. My stove is a bit touchy, I guess.

 

[IrishLass]

Yikes! I don't quite know what to say, Brenda, as I've never had that happen to me before when heating my KOH/glycerin. How high did you have the heat?

For what it's worth, I set mine on med-high, which on my stove is #8 on my dial (#11 being the highest setting). Oh, and in case it matters, my stove is an electric coil stove (not a glass top). My coils barely get semi-sorta-partly red for a few seconds every once in a while before going back to black to maintain med-high on #8.

Did it ever try to boil over? I would think that the solution would have tried boiling up and over if it got that hot. Whenever mine looks like it's going to boil up and over, I remove it from the heat to let it settle before resuming.

If you don't feel brave enough to try the same way again, you can instead mix your KOH with enough water to dilute it, and then add your full amount of glycerin to the solution that you were originally going to use. Of course, that will mean tweaking your dilution rate when you dilute your paste, but I've done it that way once before with the 65% OO GLS formula that I also make, and it came out fine in the end. It just took some extra fiddling with my water amount at dilution time.


IrishLass

 

[traderbren]

I have a gas range. I used one of my smaller burners, started it on medium, when it tried boiling I lifted it off heat, turned my heat down to low, kept stirring, at which point it was crusty. It went from crusty to smoking in a matter of seconds. The smell was horrid, but thankfully our range hood fan is pretty powerful and vents directly outside. I double checked to make sure my KOH was really KOH, but I've used it for shaving soap before so that was a last ditch hope, lol.

I will try again at some point, but in the meantime my water dissolved KOH batch is cooking away nicely.


Once it's all done, I'll probably dissect the rest of your response and try again.

Thank you for your reply! Fail big or go home, right?