Palm Oil Substitute and SoapCalc

[SoapyGoats]

What is a GOOD oil substitute for Palm Oil?

Also, on the graph on Soap Calc, do you want all the bars (bubbly, etc. and the acids) to be all about level? And do you want to have every acid on the graph?

PLEASE, do not say, " what are you doing selling, and asking beginner questions!" to what I've just posted.

I am still learning, just like anyone else.

 

[Obsidian]

Lard is about the best substitute for palm and makes a really nice bar.

 

[scrubbadubdub]

I switch between Palm & Lard- I like them both.
I shoot for all the soap qualities to be in the middle ground.
As for the acids; Ricinoleic will not be present unless you add castor oil to your recipe and the rest of the acids numbers are kind of all over the place and I am not sure if there is a recommended range.

We have all been where you are. Everyone here is very helpful and you can find a lot of answers by doing a forum search (which is how I answer most of my personal soap making questions).

 

[tyerod]

In my very basic research palm kernel and coconut oil are the two more common oils that add a cleansing property to the soap. I noted three others as well as straight myristic or lauric acid that add a large cleansing property. Lard appears to help hardness and conditioning with very little addition of a cleansing property.
As for numbers I am still using the suggested ranges for the properties. As I do more research I may venture outside of the ranges if it seems necessary

(edit: corrected palm oil to palm kernel oil)

 

[JessieD]

I am extremely new to soaping, but thought I'd throw in my 2 cents as well. I had read that back in the 70s they came up with a 'perfect soap' system. I guess they gave all the oils number values (you see them on soap calc) and the perfect combination with give you the perfect score…which I read was 165. The closer to that score you are, the better your soap.

Like I said though…I'm new to this. This is something I read somewhere and the more seasoned soapers may correct me.

Jessie

 

[SoapyGoats]

the oils number values (you see them on soap calc) and the perfect combination with give you the perfect score…which I read was 165. The closer to that score you are, the better your soap.

Jessie

Were/what numbers do you mean? I've just started using Soapcalc so am not familiar with it.

 

[JessieD]

Were/what numbers do you mean?

I'm going to walk you through because that's how I explain…lol. If you know all of this, someone else reading may not, so bear with me...

In SoapCalc, enter your recipe. When you are finished, hit "2.View/Print recipe". Its the button under "1. Calculate recipe" Which is located at the bottom of your list of oils that you entered. This will open another tab.

This new tab has your recipe with all of your weights including your lye and water. Above the "Additives/Notes" section at the bottom, there is a chart showing Soap Bar Quality / Suggested Range / Your Recipe. Under "Your recipe" at the bottom, is the INS number of your recipe. This is the one that is supposed to be perfect when its at 165. The suggested range is 136-165, but I had read that perfection is 165. It could be a crock too though, lol. Someone may still correct me on this.

 

[SoapyGoats]

Thanks SO much!

 

[shunt2011]

I agree on the lard. It works great as a sub. I've done it and it make a lovely soap. Also, Palm is not cleansing however, Palm Kernel is cleansing and is comparable to Coconut though a bit different. Palm and Palm Kernel are two different animals. LatherLifeNaturally if you just started using soap calc how did you do your recipes prior to soap calc?

 

[SoapyGoats]

I used Bramble Berry's Lye calculator. But I like Soap Calc better, now that I know how to use it.

 

[tyerod]

I agree on the lard. It works great as a sub. I've done it and it make a lovely soap. Also, Palm is not cleansing however, Palm Kernel is cleansing and is comparable to Coconut though a bit different. Palm and Palm Kernel are two different animals. LatherLifeNaturally if you just started using soap calc how did you do your recipes prior to soap calc?

Well, if I would have read my own notes before posting I would have had that correct. Teaches me to think I know what I'm talking about. Thanks for getting the correct info out there.

 

[DeeAnna]

Um, well, the "165 is perfect" theory is nice, but it's not anything more than someone's opinion. Frankly, I wouldn't get hung up on a specific number -- this parameter is not that sensitive. If you're shooting for a recipe with an INS of about 165, then anything between 160 and 170 is probably good enough.

INS is an indicator of the ease of saponification and was developed for use in industrial soapmaking. The higher the INS, the easier/faster the saponification reaction and the harder the soap will be when fully saponified so it will unmold easier.

In handcrafted soapmaking, INS is not quite so critical of a parameter. Staying in the recommended range is a good idea especially if you're a new soap maker, but it's not the end of the world if your recipe is outside that range, either high or low.

If the INS is very low, the soap might saponify slowly (as well as be slow to trace) and be overly soft in the mold and need more time to harden enough to be unmolded. But it might be a great soap recipe to do swirls with.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...Also, on the graph on Soap Calc, do you want all the bars (bubbly, etc. and the acids) to be all about level? And do you want to have every acid on the graph?..."

The short answers are No and Not necessarily. So basically forget about it -- you'll just wear yourself out trying and won't accomplish much.

A longer answer is this: "The numbers" are the estimated percentages of certain groupings of fatty acids in your soap recipe. The names (bubbly, hardness, conditioning, etc.) for "the numbers" are quite misleading, especially for beginners who usually take the names literally.

For example, the cleansing number is the % of lauric and myristic acids. These acids come from the hard fats, such as coconut, babassu, and palm kernel. If you want a soap that is a strong cleaner and efficient dissolver of fats -- or if you want a soap that lathers well in hard, cold, or salt water -- then you'll want a lot of myristic and lauric acid in your recipe -- in other words, you'll want a high value for the cleansing number. If you don't want a soap that strips your skin of its oils, you want to back off on the cleansing number, often by quite a bit.

The other "numbers" represent other groupings of fatty acids, and some of these "numbers" are inter-related. For example, if you go higher in cleansing, your recipe will generally go lower in conditioning, and vice versa.

 

[MoonBath]

I'm also looking for a palm oil substitute, but I need one that's not an animal product like lard or tallow.

 

[MountNView]

This was a helpful discussion for me. I just went and looked at my recipes and they are in the 148 to 155 range so I will have to work to get them closer to 165. Thank you.

 

[Saswede]

Moon bath, there are ways to work around palm oil - so you don't actually need a direct substitute.

To work around PO, you can use any or all of the oils and butters that you've used with palm, and experiment until you find a recipe that you like and that meets your needs. Olive oil gives a good quality, hard bar. But remember that soap with a high proportion of OO needs to cure for longer to be at its best. If you have sensitive skin, you may need to stay lower on the coconut oil. But if not, you can use 25-30% CO without it being overly drying - although at the higher end, I'd generally add in 5 or 6% castor oil or up to 10% shea butter, because I've found that both seem to offset any drying effects of the CO. I particularly like soaps with RBO too, and find that the combination of OO, RBO, CO and shea butter (with or without a small amount of other oils like castor, argan or almond) works well for me.

BTW, I've never used palm oil because I don't trust the "sustainable" label put on palm oil that's produced by the very people/companies responsible for the deforestation of Indonesia and Malaysia ..... Companies processing the oil are entitled to label their palm oil as sustainable because they're members of RSPO, but RSPO members have been "caught" on camera by Greenpeace and other organizations, as they slash and burn rain forest to clear land for new palm plantations. And now these companies are starting the same thing in west Africa, and calling it sustainable/responsible because there are no orangutans there! So instead they're threatening a number of west African animal species, like the drill, with extinction - and forcing poor subsistence farmers off land that they've farmed for generations. But that's a whole other topic .......




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[DeeAnna]

"...they are in the 148 to 155 range so I will have to work to get them closer to 165..."

Honestly, why??? Recipes in that INS range should be fine, unless you have some other reason to tweak them. I am utterly mystified by this point of view that INS=165 is some magic number to strive for.

If someone can cite reputable sources -- not just "someone wrote" or "I read it on the internet" -- then I'm quite willing to be corrected. Everything I've learned so far about INS, however, is that it was developed as a simple, quick screening tool for industrial soap making. And my personal experience with handcrafted soap has reinforced this understanding. INS is just a rough guide.

 

[JessieD]

This is probably the best explanation I have found. I was wrong on the 165…it was 160. That's my bad memory, and I appologise. I hope it helps people understand the mystery at least, what you do with it is up to you. If you want to go to the site I got it from, you can find it here.

The calculation is actually a simple one, making us wonder why there is such an elusiveness around it. For those of you that like math and want to know how to experiment with INS values in your recipes continue on…

Obtain the KOH SAP value of each of your oils from your supplier. Two things are important here, first you should get the numbers from your oil supplier so you know the number is absolutely correct for your ingredients; second, make sure to get the KOH number. Yes, the SAP listed for potassium hydroxide – do not use the SAP for sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or your numbers won’t be right. The KOH SAP value is multiplied by 1000 to bring it into a whole number. For example, Olive Oil has a KOH value of .190.

.190*1000 = 190

Next, look up the iodine values for each of the oils in your recipe. The iodine values are usually provided as a range with a high and low value. Olive Oil has an iodine range of 79-95. These numbers are averaged together to get a single number.

(79+95)/2 = 87

Subtract the iodine average from the SAP to get the INS value for the oil.

(190*1000) – ((75+94)/2)= 103

Once you have the INS values for each of your oils, you need to calculate the percentage of each oil in the recipe. Divide the weight of the single oil, by the sum of the weights of all of the oils. For example, a recipe with 12 ounces of coconut, 12 ounces of olive oil and 16 ounces of lard would be calculated as:

The coconut and olive would be: 12/(12+12+16)= .30 or 30%
The lard would be: 16/(12+12+16) = .40

The INS contribution of the oil in the recipe would be the INS value multiplied by the percentage. So our Olive oil would have its INS contribution figured as follows:

103*.30= 30.9

Add each of the INS contributions of each of the oils in the recipe to get the total INS value. The ideal is said to be 160.

Our example recipe above has an INS of 163.9 – fairly close to the ideal. We can adjust the recipe by replacing a portion of high INS oils (such as coconut, palm and lard) with oils with low INS values (such as jojoba, sunflower, and grapeseed), trying to lower the value to get it closer to the 160 ideal.

Remember, INS values are only one consideration when creating your recipes. Lather, texture, and hardness are a few other considerations. It would be easy to concentrate on only the INS calculation and end up with an exact 160, but if you ignore the other considerations you could end up with a soap that has qualities that you just don’t like.

So why should you even consider using the INS value at all? By adjusting our recipes to be closer to the INS values, we have experienced a drastic reduction in the time it takes to trace – less than 5 minutes. In addition, prior to the INS calculation, our recipes seldom ever completed a “gel” stage so saponification was completed over the course of several weeks during the drying time. After adjusting the INS values, both our lard and palm based recipes gel every time. When completing the gel phase, we’ve noticed that our soaps are extremely mild straight out of the mold. While we still feel that the bars need to complete a curing process it is more to allow the bars to harden rather than for completion of the saponification process.

So our experience with using the INS calculation to adjust recipes is that it creates a mixture of oils that more readily traces, goes into the gel phase, and completes the entire saponification process faster.

 

[pamielynn]

Personally, I care more about the iodine number than the INS number and try to keep it under 70. Over 70 and I find I itch when using those bars AND they seem to melt faster. But this is just my own observations about my own soap.

 

[MoonBath]

BTW, I've never used palm oil because I don't trust the "sustainable" label put on palm oil that's produced by the very people/companies responsible for the deforestation of Indonesia and Malaysia ..... Companies processing the oil are entitled to label their palm oil as sustainable because they're members of RSPO, but RSPO members have been "caught" on camera by Greenpeace and other organizations, as they slash and burn rain forest to clear land for new palm plantations. And now these companies are starting the same thing in west Africa, and calling it sustainable/responsible because there are no orangutans there! So instead they're threatening a number of west African animal species, like the drill, with extinction - and forcing poor subsistence farmers off land that they've farmed for generations. But that's a whole other topic .......

That's exactly why I don't want to use it. I want no part of that.