THEORY

Soaps and detergents are essential to personal and public health. They safely remove germs, soils
and other contaminants and help us to stay healthy and make our surroundings more pleasant.
Soaps are made from fats and oils or their fatty acids. Fatty acids are merely carboxylic acids
consisting of a long hydrocarbon chain at one end and a carboxyl group (-COOH) at the other
end. They are generally represented as RCOOH. They are an important component of plants,
animals and other microorganisms. They are found in various parts of the body, such as cell
membranes, the nervous system and as lung surfactant. There are two groups of fatty acids,
saturated fatty acids and unsaturated fatty acids. If the fatty acid has a single carbon-carbon
double bond in the molecule, it is known as a mono-unsaturated fatty acid. Oleic acid is a mono-
unsaturated fatty acid .If a fatty acid has two or more carbon-carbon double bonds in the
molecule, it is known as poly-unsaturated fatty acid. Linoleic acid
{ CH3(CH2)4CH=CHCH2CH=CH(CH2)7COOH } is a poly-unsaturated fatty acid. It contains
two double bonds. Long chain fatty acids always exist as triglycerides and are found in fats and
oils. Triglycerides are esters of fatty acids and are formed by combining fatty acids with
glycerol. Soaps are sodium or potassium salts of long chain fatty acids. When triglycerides in
fat/oil react with aqueous NaOH or KOH, they are converted into soap and glycerol. This is
called alkaline hydrolysis of esters. Since this reaction leads to the formation of soap, it is called
the Saponification process.








OBJECTIVE
To synthesize a sample of hard soap
To test the soap produced


INTRODUCTION
Soap is produced by the saponification (hydrolysis) of a triglyceride (fat or oil). In this process
the triglyceride is reacted with a strong base such as sodium or potassium hydroxide to produce
glycerol and fatty acid salts. The salt of the fatty acid is called a soap. Fatty acids are straight-
chain monocarboxylic acids. The most common fatty acids range in size from 10-20 carbons and
most often have an even number of carbon atoms including the carboxyl group carbon. The
carbon-carbon bonds in saturated fatty acids are all single bonds, while unsaturated fatty acids
have one or more carbon-carbon double bonds in their chains. One example of a saturated fatty
acid is palmitic acid, CH3-(CH2)14-CO2H. Fatty acids are seldom found as free molecules in
nature but are most often a part of a larger molecule called a triglyceride. Triglycerides consist of
a three-membered carbon chain (glycerol backbone) with a fatty acid bonded to each of the three
carbon atoms in the glycerol backbone. The bond between the fatty acid and the glycerol
backbone is referred to as an ester linkage. In the saponification process the ester linkage is
broken to form glycerol and soap. Saponification involves heating fat with an alkaline solution.
The alkaline solution hydrolyzes the fat to alcohol and the salt of a long chain carboxylic acid
(soap).





RECOMMENDATIONS

To avoid parallax error from occurring ,apparatus for this experiment be placed on a stable and
smooth surface, this step is to make sure that the parallax error can be prevented at its minimum.
To avoid kind of errors , the result obtained must always by reconfirm by other members in the
group to confirm the accuracy of the result obtained .Besides that, to avoid from conducting a
slow process experiment ,the experiment should read the lab manual beforehand to get a brief
idea about the experiment so that they know what to do during the experiment.