Project 17 Soaps Lab Report

Project 17: Soaps and Detergents
Lauren Navarro
Chemistry 1021 Laboratory Section 448
Instructor: Qiuying Zhang
October 5th, 2017

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Discussion and Scientific Explanations

Throughout this lab our main goal was to produce and test soaps and detergents that would be good for the future and environmental friendly to be used to clean oil off birds. These soaps and detergents were each made out of different fats(lard, shortening or olive oil) and the solubility was tested between the different starting materials and then the final product of
The solubility of the starting materials and vegetable oil was first collected(Table 1) and because of these test it indicated that the starting materials or the fats were nonpolar and it make sense that they wouldn’t be soluble in the water. This makes sense because “likes dissolves in likes” so because water has positive and negative poles it is a polar substance which wouldn’t dissolve in a nonpolar substance(1). Also, since none of the starting materials were soluble in hydrochloric acid one could assume that none of them were organic bases. In order to make the alternative soaps a triglyceride - olive oil reacted with a basic solution which was NaOH to form a glycerol molecule and a soap. Soaps have a hydrophilic end, which is the carboxylic acid region and a hydrophobic end, which is the chain from the fatty acid on the actual soap, this is called saponification. It can be reversed by the process of esterification(2). Once each starting material was mixed was hydroxide and glycerol the solutions were heated which helped the chains break apart and become thick and pasty. When this cooled 50 mL of saturated sodium chloride solution and ice was added while being mixed in order to make the substance easier to filter. These solutions were then filter by using a suction filtration to separate the waste water and the actual soap. This was then set aside
The latherability shows how many bubbles and how long the bubbles will stay for. First we tested the cleaning ability of each soap and detergent by putting olive oil on separate watch glasses and use each of the soaps or detergents mixed with water to clean the oil off. Molecules of the soap can be the connection between the polar water molecules and non-polar molecules of the oil to remove them(2). The watch glass that is the least cloudy cleans the best. This is shown the table 5 and in our results the lard was the best soap to use for cleaning and detergent 1 is the best out of the detergents. Overall detergent 1 had the best cleaning ability out of all the alternative soaps and detergents. Next, we tested the latherability by putting each solution in a test tube and adding water. Then shaking each one and recording the data of how long the bubbles lasted and how many bubbles each one had. The results of our data is shown in table 4 with the data detergent 1 had the most bubbles that stayed the longest and the soap made out of olive oil had the most bubbles that lasted the longest. However, when looking at all of the data from both charts detergent 1 was the best solution to use to clean the oil of the