Thursday, November 18, 2010

Chemistry

Made some soap today in chemistry, i thought it'd be pretty boring but wow its awesome :D
For one the equipment set up looked pretty cool, (refluxing then distillation and separating) Then at the end we got to keep the soap we made, its pretty much just raw soap, no chemicals or purfumes. It removes every single speck of dirt and oil from your hands. My fingers are so grippy now.
If anyone wants to try this out themselves its not to hard,
add 30ml ethanol to 6cm^3 of sunflower oil and 3g of sodium hydroxide pellets. Place all these in a flask. put the flask in a water bath. attach a leiBig condenser to the top turn on the heat and you're ready to go. let it boil for about 30 mins.  then set the apparatus up for distillation. So this time the condenser goes out to the side instead of straight up. collect all your ethanol in a flask that condenses in the condenser (congrats you now have <95% ethanol on your hands go get drunk!) Take the rest of the solution thats in the flask and add it to 100 ml sodium chloride (brine) then filter this solution through filter paper and hey presto you have soap on the paper, leave it to dry out over night.

11 comments:

  1. This is pretty cool. I'll have to try this out sometime. :)

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  2. oh wow soap is pretty hard to make

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  3. Most of us probably don't have that kind of equipment to facilitate that process though.

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  4. Nice! I don't like soap, I never bathe.

    :D

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  5. Interesting information, that's for sure. I don't think I'll ever make my own though... buying it at the store is easy enough haha.

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  6. Wheres the part where we turn it into dynamite like in Fight Club?

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  7. that would be the glycerine, its whats left in the container after the soap has been filtered off, however i think you need to remove the brine first. its pretty much harmless as it is, you need to make it nitroglycerine, which is a very difficult and dangerous process, google will find instructions on how to make that.

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  8. haha i wanna make my own soap too

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  9. you made this by yourself! WOW

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