Palm, PKO & Peanut ONLY?

[welder]

Hi everyone.

I've got a question for you.

Can good hard bar soap be made using only Palm, PKO & peanut oil?

I was thinking that maybe a good recipe might be something like 10% PKO, 20% palm & 70% peanut.

This is related to my plan to make soap in West Africa.

You see, PKO is the cheapest oil in Africa, so it seemed like the best choice, but I bought some here (Canada) and made a batch of 100% PKO soap. It left a really strong rancid odour on my hands.

I found a better supplier with much fresher PKO, then tried another batch. That time the soap was much nicer, leaving much less odour on my hands. The smell was still there, but it is 75% less than from the first batch.

Anyway, I was thinking that if I can send a peanut sheller to Africa, my sister-in-law can buy raw peanuts from the farmers, then shell them & press the oil at a nearby grist mill. With all the biodiesel palm plantations popping up all over west Africa, maybe peanut oil will be the best alternative to pure PKO soap. I'm thinking that eventually, all the biodiesel breweries using all the palm will drive up the cost of palm oil & maybe PKO too. Biodiesel is likely worth more than soap over there, so ther writing is on the wall...

Since even fresh PKO seemed to leave a scent behind, maybe if I limit the PKO content to no more than 10%, then the soap will be okay.

Will my recipe of 10% PKO, 20% palm & 70% peanut oil make hard bars of general purpose soap?

 

[jbarad]

that combo in those percentages gave a really soft bar of soap on soapcalc. I did play with the percentages a bit and came up with this for you.

Palm - 40%
PKO - 25%
Peanut - 35%

That gave the following properties

Hardness - 41
Cleansing - 16
Conditioning - 53
Bubbly - 16
Creamy - 26

Which should be a decent bar of soap. I have no idea on the shelf life of peanut oil however since I don't use it at all, so there could be issues with that recipe that I'm not seeing.

 

[smellitlikeitissoaps]

Yes you can, but I really advice not to use the peanut oil, so many people are allergic to it. But it sounds like a good bar.

 

[welder]

Somehow I think that even relative to the demographic percentages of white people allergic to peanuts, there likely aren't too many Africans allergic to peanuts.

They cook with peanut frequently.

 

[Etelka]

Your recipe will give you a reasonable bar, won't be super hard, but if that's what goes locally as far as ingredients go for it, Soapmaker gives me quite a moisturising and stable lathering bar at 5% discount

 

[welder]

Well, I'd prefer to go higher on the PKO% and the palm%, but I know that in Ghana, palm oil is worth more than PKO and the higher the PKO content, the greater the aftersmell (odour) left behind on skin after washing.

I'm sorta somewhat concerned that all plant oils there will dramatically increase in price due to the sudden increase in biodiesel production.

My thought was that if the oil market there goes crazy, at least my commercial soapmaking partner (sister-in-law) could contract a poor peanut farmer to grow her bushels of peanuts & she could shell them mechanically & expell the oil herself at a local grist mill/expeller. That way, a poor farmer that lives in northern Ghana that doesn't recieve enough rainfall to grow palm trees could still make a living growing peanuts for soap & my sister could benefit too.

Other locally sourced soapmaking feedstock include stuff like jatropha oil or shea butter. Both of these oils & the ones already mentioned may also be sought as biodiesel feedstock. At least by producing her soap feedstock by contract directly with the farmers, my sister would buffer the rise in oil prices somewhat.

I shudder to think how this biodiesel production will impact the local forests & poor peoples' nutrition.

Any advice on this?