FACULTY OF

PROCESS- AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Girls' and Boy's Day - Future Day: Soap Making

26.04.2024 -  

As part of this year's Girls' and Boy's Day - Future Day, five pupils from highschools in and around Magdeburg took part in the "Soap Production" offer. Four other schoolgirls were in the laboratory together with Luise Blach "On the trail of colors".

Soap boiling is one of the oldest processes. On Girls' and Boys' Day - Future Day, natural soaps were produced using the cold process and caustic soda (NaOH). The students carefully mixed NaOH with a mixture of natural fats and produced an emulsion that increasingly solidified through chemical reaction of the ingredients. As heat is released during these reactions, temperatures between 35-40°C develop in the cold process. Diffusion processes and further reactions take place in the gel phase of the solidifying soap. In addition to chemistry, such processes are of great interest in process engineering, as they determine, among other things, the quality of the subsequent product. They are scientifically investigated, for example, in the Collaborative Research Center SFB Bulk Reaction for processes in which the chemical reaction takes place at temperatures of up to 1000°C and above. Depending on the fats used, soaps with different hardness, foam formation and stability as well as cleaning properties can be produced. However, the strength and appearance of the soap also depends on the saponification process, e.g. its speed.

 

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