What is soap made of?

Soap is a very common daily necessity in life. Soap has a wide range of uses in life. For example, it can be used to wash hands. Many people also use soap to take a bath, especially when the hands are dirty, they can be easily washed off with soap. In fact, the role of soap is not only cleaning, but also has a sterilization effect. The following introduces the components of soap.

What is soap made of?

Soap is the sodium salt of a carboxylic acid, R-CO2Na, where the R group is generally different and is a variety of hydrocarbon groups.

1. Soap is the general term for metal salts of fatty acids. The general formula is RCOOM, where RCOO is a fatty acid radical and M is a metal ion. The carbon number of fatty acids in daily soaps is generally 10-18. The metals are mainly alkaline metals such as sodium or potassium. Special-purpose soaps are also made from ammonia and certain organic bases such as ethanolamine and triethanolamine.

2. In a broad sense, any fatty acid salt obtained by saponification or neutralization reaction of oils, waxes, rosin or fatty acids with alkalis can be called soap. Soap is soluble in water and has the function of washing and removing dirt. There are various types of soap, including toilet soap, also known as toilet soap, metal soap and compound soap.

3. The main component of soap is R-CO2Na (sodium stearate (C17H35COONa)), in which the R group is generally different and is a variety of hydrocarbon groups. R- is a hydrophobic group and the carboxyl group is a hydrophilic group. In hard water, soap forms a curd-like substance with Ca2+, Mg2+, etc., fatty acid calcium salt, etc., which is commonly known as "calcium soap" and becomes a useless descaling agent. Adding softener to hard water removes the hard water ions, allowing the soap to work. Medicated soap mainly has some disinfectants added to it. Soap has fragrance added to it. Crystal soap contains saponin, so it has a particularly strong degreasing ability.

The ingredients of soap are divided into main ingredients and added ingredients.

1. Main ingredients: Sodium fatty acids generated by mixing various animal fats and vegetable oils and undergoing alkali saponification reaction. This is the bulk of the soap's cleaning ingredients.

2. Added ingredients: rosin, sodium silicate, CMC... These ingredients can increase the hardness of soap, increase foaming properties, and increase the detergency of soap.