Steps to Produce Liquid Soap in Nigeria for All Purposes 2024

Filed in Articles, Tutorials by on February 5, 2024

You may be wondering about the steps to produce liquid soap either for business or for personal use. Here, you will discover the appropriate guide to make liquid soap seamlessly, making soap at home is significantly cheaper. `

Steps to Produce Liquid Soap

I am sure your answer is yeah! If you are comfortable with the basics of cold-process soap making and looking for a new challenge, try making liquid soap.

It is more complicated and takes a lot of patience. You’ll likely notice a few changes in your soap-making process, but if you follow the steps carefully, it is not too difficult.

There’s a lot of difference between bar soap and liquid soap, and the difference is in alkali used to saponify the oils.

All soap, whether hard or liquid begins with a simple chemical reaction between oils and an alkali. For instance, bar soap, it’s sodium hydroxide. While With liquid soaps it’s potassium hydroxide.

However, Liquid soap is a bit more complicated to make at home. For beginners, it’s best to use a tried and true recipe that results in a good balance of lather and moisturizing.

Ingredients

1. 16.5 oz. sunflower oil

2. 7 oz. coconut oil

3. 5.5 oz. potassium hydroxide KOH

4. 16.5 oz. distilled water for the lye mixture

5. 40 oz. distilled water to dilute the soap paste

6. Either 2 oz. of boric acid or 3 oz. of borax mixed into 10 or 6 oz. of water

7. Approx. 3 oz. fragrance or essential oil, as desired

8. Soap dye or colourant, if desired

Equipment

1. Basic tools for mixing the lye

2. Large crockpot

3. Thermometer scale, measuring cups

4. Stick blender

5. Potato masher and/or flat whisk

Mix the Lye-Water Solution and the Oils for the Liquid Soap

One primary difference between a bar soup and a liquid soup is the HOT. Instead of relying on the heat generated by the saponification process, heat is added using a double boiler, oven, or crackpot.

This recipe can be made in a double boiler or the oven, but a crackpot is preferred. It keeps everything in one pot and lets it cook evenly without having to monitor the water in a double boiler.

Begin the Soap Making

To make your liquid soap, Measure out some quantity of oils and put them in the crockpot on low. Allow this mixture to be at about 160 degrees all.

While the oils are heating, mix your lye water using the standard lye-making procedure. If you’ve never used potassium hydroxide before, don’t be alarmed.

It’s a bit more volatile in the water than sodium hydroxide. It makes an odd boiling/groaning sound as it’s dissolving. This is normal.

When the lye water is completely mixed and clear, slowly add it to your oils. (You don’t need to wait until it is cool.) Don’t turn the stick blender on just yet.

Just stir the oils and lye together. Then, like in cold process soap making, start using the stick blender. At first, it will seem to want to separate. Keep blending.

Bring the Soap Paste to Trace

Depending on your mixture of oils, it will take a long time to get to trace, up to 30 minutes. “Trace” for liquid soap looks like a cold process.

It’s kind of ​pudding-like, or a blend of pudding and applesauce, with the characteristic “traces” and/or ridges when you dribble the soap back into the pot or stir.

You can’t really stir it too much, so it’s best to make sure you’ve got a good solid trace before moving to the next step.

Cook the Paste for Liquid Soap

Once the soap has reached trace, you’ll need your next measure of patience. Give the soap one more good stir, shake off your stick blender, put the lid on the pot, and start waiting.

Check on the soap in about 15 to 20 minutes. If there’s any separation, just stir it and put the lid back on. Keep checking on the soap every 20 to 30 minutes.

In the 3 to 4 hours it will take this soap to cook, it will transform and go through several “stages.” Don’t worry if you don’t see one, sometimes a stage will be brief and you’ll miss it. The “stages” usually are:

  • Thick applesauce
  • Cooked custard with small bubbles
  • Watery mashed potatoes
  • Solid taffy
  • Chunky/creamy Vaseline
  • Translucent Vaseline

Keep stirring every 30 minutes through each of the stages. It will be difficult (or even near impossible) to stir through the taffy stage. Do the best you can.

The potato masher will help break the taffy up. Then, just when you think it’s never going to finish, it will get creamy and move into the Vaseline stage, getting more translucent.

Test the Liquid Soap Paste for Doneness

Once you’ve reached the 3 to 4-hour mark and the soap has softened and turned translucent, it’s time to test it to see if it’s cooked long enough.

Take two ounces of boiling water and add one ounce of your soap paste. Stir the soap, breaking it up and helping it dissolve in the water.

Once it’s completely dissolved (several minutes) check to see how clear it is. If it’s just lightly cloudy, that’s ok. The soap will “settle” after it’s finished and get even clearer.

If the dissolved soap mixture is milky or very cloudy, you’ve either not cooked it long enough or mis-measured something.

Dilute the Liquid Soap Paste

If the test mixture stays clear as it cools, it’s good to continue. The last measure of patience is needed when diluting the paste. Take the remaining 40 oz. of distilled water and bring it to a boil. Add the water to the soap paste. Stir it in a bit with a spoon or the potato masher.

Turn the heat off on the crock pot. Put the lid on and wait.

After an hour or so, stir it some more. It should have softened some by now, but it will likely still be very chunky and gooey. Put the lid back on and wait some more.

You can put the lid on and leave it to sit overnight and dissolve. If you prefer a more active role, just keep waiting and stirring, waiting and stirring. The potato masher will help to break up some of the larger chunks of paste, but nothing will help more than just waiting.

Neutralize the Liquid Soap

In addition to the different alkali, and the cooking of the soap, liquid soap is different from bar soap in the way it is planned.

If you run most recipes for a lye calculator, you’ll see that there seems to be way too much lye! Indeed, liquid soap recipes are usually planned with about a 10% lye excess. This is to ensure that all the oils are saponified.

After the soap paste has completely dissolved in the water, it’s time to neutralize the soap and add your fragrance. Turn the crockpot back on and bring the mixture back up to 180 degrees.

In a separate container, mix the neutralizing solution. You can make either a 20% boric acid solution or a 33% Borax (20 Mule Team) solution. For the boric acid, take 8 oz. of boiling water and add 2 oz. boric acid. For the Borax, use 3 oz. Borax in 6 oz. of boiling water.

It’s important to stir very well and make sure that it stays boiling. As this mixture cools, the Borax or boric acid will precipitate out of the mixture and it won’t mix into your soap!

Add about 3/4 oz. of neutralizer for every pound of soap paste (just the paste, not the added water.) So, for this recipe with about 2.8 lb. of paste, add 2 oz. (2.13 rounded down to 2) of neutralizer solution.

Too much neutralizer (especially the boric acid solution) can cause cloudiness, so it’s best to round down and err on the conservative side.

Slowly pour the neutralizer into the re-heated soap mixture and stir well. Add one ounce first and let it sit for a bit. Then add another half-ounce. Then, if you still have no cloudiness, add the final half-ounce.

Add Fragrance or Color to the Liquid Soap

After you’ve neutralized the soap, while it’s still hot, it’s time to add your fragrance and colour, if desired. Fragrance liquid soaps at about 2 percent to 3 percent.

For example, with this batch, that’s about 3 oz. of fragrance. Add the fragrance to the soap and stir it well. Likewise, if you’re adding colour (remember to take the amber colour of the soap base into your colouring), add a few drops at a time, stirring well.

Let the Liquid Soap Rest or “Sequester”

Pour it into large bottles or jars. Put them aside in a cool place and just let them rest. During this resting phase, the insoluble particles should settle to the bottom and any minor cloudiness caused by insoluble particles in the oils or added fragrance oils should clear up.

It will need to settle for one week. When you are pouring your soap into their last bottles or tubes, be careful not to disturb the settled solids, or you’ll have to let them settle out again.

CSN Team.

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