Liquid Soap ... Turned Bar Soap

[CocoPalmelle]

Hello fellow soapers,

I made a negative superfat liquid soap thinking it would make a stronger liquid dish soap. I was expecting paste but it turned solid. It was a bit problematic because I didn't prepare put the batter into molds and then I had to cut it into sections then grate them for easier dissolving. How do I prevent my liquid soap paste from solidifying?

This is my recipe
Superfat -1%
Water as % of Oils 20%

Coconut Oil 90%
Palm Oil 10%

Further concerns. The "paste" was so potent, just touching it already got rid of all the natural oils on my hands. I still haven't tried the 1:4 dilution but is the fact my skin is (gently?) peeling a red flag already?

I was also thinking I could use the grated soap paste for my laundry detergent powder. Which means lye heavy hardened liquid soap paste, borax, washing soda, baking soda. Has anyone tried doing this too?

 

[DeeAnna]

Just making sure about one point that you didn't explain -- Did you make this soap paste with KOH or NaOH?

Don't use this soap on your skin! That is active lye that is causing your skin to peel -- in effect, you're burning your skin. Handle this soap with gloves until it passes a zap test. It will probably not be lye heavy after some time passes, but it's obviously not at that point yet.

Next thing is you need to start using lye concentration or water:lye ratio, not "water as % of oils" setting. You're using almost a 50% lye concentration -- about as concentrated as you can get and still get the alkali dissolved. Can you explain why you made that choice?

That's not enough water to make a soap that's supposed to be a soft paste. Use 25% lye concentration (3:1 water:lye ratio) for soap of this type.

If you're going to make a laundry powder (although I'm not quite sure why you would want to do that with a KOH soap paste, if that's what you've made), and assuming you can actually get the soap grated into a powder, the lye heaviness will dissipate because the excess alkali will react with carbon dioxide in the air to form a carbonate (either sodium carbonate or potassium carbonate). If you want the laundry water to be alkaline, an effective way to do that is to add washing soda (sodium carbonate) to the water.

And you don't need borax and baking soda and washing soda in a dry laundry soap mix. Baking soda is ineffective, so it's really wasting your money to include it. Borax and washing soda are both effective, but honestly you only need one or the other, not both.

 

[CocoPalmelle]

Did you make this soap paste with KOH or NaOH?
You're right. I'm using 90% KOH

Can you explain why you made that choice?
As for water percentage of oils, it was just there on soapcalc.net. I have no explanation in a I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing sense.

That's not enough water to make a soap that's supposed to be a soft paste. Use 25% lye concentration (3:1 water:lye ratio) for soap of this type.
So I need more water to make it into soft paste. That makes sense. I was thinking water would just evaporate eventually because of cooking so there was no point to adding more water.

If you're going to make a laundry powder (although I'm not quite sure why you would want to do that with a KOH soap paste, if that's what you've made), and assuming you can actually get the soap grated into a powder, the lye heaviness will dissipate because the excess alkali will react with carbon dioxide in the air to form a carbonate (either sodium carbonate or potassium carbonate). If you want the laundry water to be alkaline, an effective way to do that is to add washing soda (sodium carbonate) to the water.
I will add washing soda to the water, as I'll combine it with the (not-so) liquid soap but I don't think I understand what you mean. As for making laundry with KOH soap paste, people have complained the laundry powder I made with my own cold process bar soap (Coconut oil and palm oil) was not bubbly enough and that they didn't like the bits of soap that didn't dissolve with the rest of powder. Liquid soap paste would be bubblier and dissolves in water so I am using my hardened liquid soap since it's there.

 

[DeeAnna]

Washing soda gradually loses effectiveness in the presence of water and air, so it's not a good choice for adding to a product that is liquid or a water-based paste. Borax is a better choice in a situation like this. As Zany and I pointed out elsewhere, borax in liquid soap has the disadvantage of chemically decomposing the soap.

If I were in your situation, I'd not try to mash all this into one product as I gather you want to do. Dilute the KOH soap until it is fluid enough to pour into a cup for easy measuring. Add this plain liquid soap to the laundry water. Add either dry borax or dry washing soda to the laundry water as a separate additive following the manufacturer's instructions on the box.