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Medium scale HP barsoap production
Greetigns .
I just bought a 250kg/h soap extruder machine to make comercial soap bar ussing mostly palm oil, im trying to make something kind of industrial procedure but there is almost no information on internet for medium scale industries, most of soap information are divided in two> artisan that uses crockpots and moulds or indusrial scale that use Vacum dryers, destillators, millers and 1000galons+ kettles.
So i have a 100Gallon steam kettle with 2 motors 50rpm and 1800rpm for making the soap and the extruder, the industrial process claims to salt the soap to remove glycerin and excess lye, im will jump that step assuming that i cant recover the glycerin and therefor it wouldbe a waste of salt and water, my plan is to make the saponification process, cut the saponified mass into small pieces and basically drop the soap to the extruder and recirculate it for at least 3 times adding color/fragance/aditives and changing the size of the head from big to smal noodles (jumping the milling step) and finally to a square bar head for the extruder for the cutting and stamp step.
So im making a lot of assumptions, humidity would be a crucial factor to take care, and steping a lot of steps would result into inexpected problems, but i want to know if someone have ever made soap at medium scale or could give me a hint to make it with my current equipments.
Another procedure im considering (asuming that plan A doendt work) is to make coldprocess and throw it into the extruder, but CP last to long, im willing to make the process as continous as it could be.
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26 Replies
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Hola Luis,
A few years ago, I made a small soap extruder (ordered the different parts from mechanical workshops) for a friend, he was a step above the “artisan” level.
The extruder consisted of an electric engine with a speed reducer block, a barrel house to accomodate the feeding/extruding screw at which end, there was a “shaping” block with a warming collar to keep the soap mass flowing and pass through the die. On top of the barrel, there was a funnel to feed the soap mass to the feeding/extruding screw.
He was using soap noodles made in Malaysia. He produced long soap sticks that he then cut into different bars (hotel amunities and public users).
He had different scents, different colors, different bar sizes and also different packages.
Your thinking line is interesting and I’m positive you’ll come over this issue and be soon running your business.
Many knowledgeable people on this forum could put you on the right track. A.F.A I’m concerned, I’ll be following this development closely.
HTH,
Ameen -
Hola Luis, como has estado?
I can’t be a lot of help except:
First, I think you should try to recover glycerine because glycerin in the soap bar causes it to sweat in humid conditions. For the same reason I don’t think using CP soap entirely, is a good idea.
I understand there have been many commercially successful soaps that use a combination of natural soap (could be CP or HP) and synthetic surfactants. -
Hola @Ameen y @Belassi , muchas gracias por su ayuda.
@ameen thanks for your positive feedback, my extruder its kind of the one you mentioned, same principle, but it have a conic chamber betwen de end of the screw and the noozle that makes all the heat needed in the extrusion due to compresion and a jacketed water recirculation arround all the screw.
Basically im trying to make all the soap by my self, there is a lot of palm and coconut oil available at very cheap price in my country.@belassi saludos, he estado bien y tu?, he leido que vives o trabajas en Mexico, hablas espa;ol?
One of the projects in my mind includes separating glycerin, mostly for having extra incomings and ussing it on my own products, but i dont have a destillator, and all i have seen available are laboratory destillators, beside that i need a lot of storage volume considering that the kettle could make arround 5 batchs/day at least about 200-500liters of remaining lye/glicerin/salt/water solution.
If i can find a storage tank to keep the project running while a i find a destillator i will remove the glicerin, otherwhise i dont know if is costefective or advantageus trowing salt/glycerin to the sink
keeping in mind that ussing more lye than needed and removing glycerin with salt will ensure that there will not be unreacted lye or fat on the soap. -
keeping in mind that using more lye than needed and removing glycerin with salt will ensure that there will not be unreacted lye or fat on the soap
- I’m not an expert but I would have thought that testing a given batch of oils for its sap index and then using the exact amount in hot process would be the best method. By mixing the paste with a filler and a suitable solid synthetic surfactant and forcing it through the extruder you could make a combined bar.Si, hablo Espanol, viviendo aqui por mas que 20 años.
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Luis,
Unless I’m out of subject, I think you are thinking of the ” Marseille Soap” or the “Aleppo Soap” process i.e huge cauldrons, soap cooking for several days, washing the soap mass with salt water to separate the soap from glycerine, lye and other impurities, then filling that soap into cement square/rectangular molds built directly on the floor in ventilated room where the soap is left to dry a few weeks before it is then cut into blocks and bars into different sizes and put again to dry further.
If that is what you have in mind then you don’t need the soap extruder. If your idea is to use the soap extruder, then your best approach is to have the soap noodles made to your spec’s and start your soap production.
On the other hand, if you are keen on using your locally available oils ( you mentioned palm and coconut oils), which I encourage you to do, it saves you money, transports and CO2 emissions in the air we breath and at the same time, gives also an income to your local producers, then making your own soap noodles will also help you sell that as a raw material to other soapers.
Producing your own noodles will give you a lot more advantages, you can offer soap making training classes and also sell to your “students” a whole concept i.e learning the soaping skills, buying from you the raw materials (soap noodles, colorants, scents, a soap extruder), I can share with you the basic drawings for the extruder if you can get the parts made at your end in a mechanical workshop. Feel free to P.M me if you feel more comfortable with that.
You are lucky to have palm and coconut oils easily available, at my end, we are drowning in pomace olive oil instead.
Again, I am of no further help for the soap noodles production because I am still trying to learn it but the info. is very scarce on the net as far as I could understand.
Hope this helps,
Ameen -
Some things to consider:
1) Due to the strength of their bulk buying power, companies that make/sell soap noodles will almost always be able sell you soap noodles cheaper than you can make them yourself.
2) Belassi is correct, leaving glycerin in the soap causes stability problems.
3) If you’re not salting out the soap, you don’t need/can’t use an extruder - the soap will probably be too mushy.
3) To the best of my knowledge, there is no continuous process for soap making available/possible at your scale. Also, continuous process is a huge consumer safety issue - if you get a bad lot of a raw material from your supplier, how do you tell which of your products have the bad material? -
@Belassi im attempting to make a combined bar, ussing brine after saponification is “complete” does the soap go to the surface and unreacted or excess lye go to bottom as @Ameen said, so is a benefit because i dont have to test or know the exact sap index of every raw palm oil, wich i know is very unstable from my source.
-Es un alivio que hables español, mi ingles es bastante basico
@ameen i would like to use premade noodles, but as all my post on this forums my main problem is the imposibility to buy any raw material from another country, we have exchange money control, so its almost imposible to buy in any exangable money.
So im pushed to make my own noodle from soap, “Marseille Soap” and “Aleppo Soap” are very alike of what i intend to do, but im willing to speedup the dry time.
I will pm you for the extruder plans, if the project goes well i will need another extruder, its a luck having tons of palmoil available, no one uses it here for any industrial process .
@bobzchemist thanks for your advices.
1) I cant buy noodles from any source
2 & 3) you are right, salting is a must, im just studing how i will recover ór storage the glycerin
4) I agree continous is imposible at my stage, but i want to have a intermittent process as fast as it could be, palmoil quality is a problem that i alredy have and is quite imposible to solve, the only solution that has came is buying at least 5 tons batchs to secure the more homogeneus composition -
As far as I know, when making soap “noodles”, the process runs like this:
Fill tank with oil, heat to ~180F
Add lye slowly while stirring (about 80% of SAP value), wait for reaction to finish
Add boiling hot brine, stir.
Soap floats, brine+glycerine falls to bottom.
Drain brine+glycerine, store for later extraction
Add remaining amount of lye, heat soap to 210F, stir. If you don’t know the SAP value, you can add excess lye and then wash it out with brine at this point.
Add water (or steam) at 200F until soap mass separates. top will be about 70/30 soap to water, bottom will be about 20% soap plus all impurities. Drain bottom layer, save for industrial use if desired.
Drain top layer into trays, allow to dry/solidify. Grind/extrude into noodles, dry further.This process may take several days, depending on the strength of your heat source, but it’s the easiest way to pull impurities, etc. out of oils.
If you have really decent quality oil, you might be able to skip the salting out bit, but that might not work for other properties.
As you scale up, it would probably be easiest to add more kettles, and stagger the processing, so that you have a batch being finished every day.
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@Bobzchemist Thanks you very much bob, your explanation was what im looking for, im aiming to do only 1 salt wash to speed up the process a little, so predicting the sap value is a must.
when you mean the “strength of your heat source” is related to the heating process ór the dry process?, i can reach 180f-200f in about 10min in each process, i have read that the saponification time for hot process is very fast, do you know how many time it would take for the reaction to finish?
Im most worried in the drying process and how to mesure the humidity of the soap (14%-16%) because it seems that an excess of humidity would be a problem in the extruder.
I have another kettle, a small one 52gal i have to mesure the mass of the soap floating on the surface to see if it fit in the small kettle and keep ussing the biggest one in a new batch.
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Strength of heat source is how powerful it is in terms of BTU’s/kilocalories per hour. Think of it as the difference in heat generated from a wooden match compared to the heat from a campfire - it’s going to take a lot longer to boil a cup of water with a match than it will with a campfire - or a blowtorch, for that matter.
The longer it takes to heat the water and/or oil you use to the right temp, the longer it will take to get your batch completed.
There are electronic moisture meters available that could help, or you could simply put a sample of soap in a 250F oven for an hour to measure moisture content.
If I were you, I’d use the 52 gallon kettle to heat your brine, then use it for boiling the pitching and settling water. If you try to add room temperature water, your soap process will take a lot longer.
My VERY strong recommendation is for you to focus on making a quality product first, then worry about speeding up your process later.
I found this to be a useful resource, back when we were contemplating making our own organic soap noodles:
https://www.britannica.com/science/soap/Optical-brighteners#ref624625
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@Bobzchemist Thank you endlessly for your generosity to share of your knowledge concerning the “Soap noodles production”, very helpful.
For what is worth, according to
what I have been reading on the different
French sites, these are the last
4 soaperies still perpetuating the traditional
cauldron soaping a.k.a the
Marseille Soaping Process.These producers are all based in the Marseille (France) region, hence
the name: Marseille Soaping Process: Hot soaping process in open cauldrons.-
Savonnerie
Fer à Cheval, à Marseille. Here is the
production video : http://www.savondemarseille-lewebdoc.com/fabrication.html
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Savonnerie
Marius Fabre, à Salon-de-Provence :-
http://www.marius-fabre.com/en/content/32-making-marseilles-soap
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Savonnerie
du Midi, à Marseille :-
http://www.savonneriedumidi.fr/en-
Savonnerie
Le Sérail, à Marseille :-
http://www.savon-leserail.com/fabrication (for
the English page, they refer to the google translation).The Marseille Soap Process must
follow these steps:Cooking Marseilles soap
It takes fourteen days to produce real
Marseilles soap, at Marius Fabre soap factory.The Marseilles process or “full fire” heating : A vat contains
30 tons of soapStage 1 • Saponification or paste producing
The vegetable oils and soda wash are mixed together in a large vat which
can contain 20 tons of raw materials. Under the action of soda and heat, the
oils gradually become soap paste. This chemical reaction is the saponification
or paste production.Stage 2 • Rinsing or cleansing
The soap paste is rinsed several times with salt water to remove the remaining
soda.Stage 3 • Heating process
The paste is heated at 100 °C for ten days. Heating starts up every morning and
is turned off every night.Stage 4 • Liquifying
The paste is then rinsed several times with fresh water, to remove all
impurities, thus earning the name “extra pure”. Being more liquid, the paste is
then allowed to settle during 2 days.Pouring
the soap pasteStage 5 • Pouring
off the hot soap pasteWhile still hot
(between 50 and 70 °C), the soap paste is poured into the huge cooling tanks,
by means of an articulated wooden feed pipe, called “goulotte”.Drying Marseille soap
Stage 6 • Drying
outThe soap is left to
dry for 48 hours in a room. When the Mistral wind blows, the windows facing
North are opened and the wind shortens the drying-out process.Stage 7 • Cutting
upOnce dry, the soap
is cut, in the moulds, into 35 kilo blocks by a wheel-operated blade.
These blocks are then cut up in a machine producing 2.5 kilos, I kilo, 600g,
500g and 400g blocks.Moulding Marseilles soap
Etape 8 : Le moulage
There
are two ways of stamping : hand-stamping on bars or in a machine mould for
cubes. Cubes are stamped on all six sides, the traditional sign of “Marseilles
soap”.From Stage 6, the soap can be vacuum dried to make soap noodles or 3
mill roll dried to make soap chips.The concentration of the brine solution
for washing the soap is:
360grs NaCl/L water .@luiscuevasii, I live in a mafiocracy where the change rate hardly exists for the average everyday people and the average salary here is about USD $250/month. The rules exist so that we, the vast majority should not break at any rates, while the mafiocrates have “carte blanche” over us. We are at the merci of friends and relatives that live abroad to “help” with change and foreign currency because we can’t place orders from outside our borders otherwise.
As mentioned before, we have huge access to cheap pomace olive oil and that encourages me to produce soap noddles based on pomace.
I would be very thankful if you could share your set-up so that we could exchange notes in this issue.
Thankfully,
AmeenN.B Any member on this forum is thankfully welcome to share any piece of knowledge/info to make this task possible.
Thank you again Bobzchemist for what you shared previously about the soap noodles.
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It seems to me that if Ameen has a large quantity of pomace and Luis has a large quantity of palm and coconut, they should arrange a mutual export/import since a perfect soap can be made by combining all three. 100% pomace soap isn’t going to be that good; won’t lather well, and soft.
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The other things I’ll point out are:
1) Look at how the homecrafters in the US make their soaps. It’s not nearly as involved as that process you mentioned above, even though there may be a two-month or longer curing period. They sell very well. To the best of my knowledge, though, these soaps can’t be extruded.
2) Tallow has been used as a soap ingredient for hundreds of years. It hasn’t fallen out of favor until recently. A tallow/olive oil soap, in the right proportions,could be quite nice. As a meat byproduct, it’s usually pretty cheap.
3) Consider taking the olive oil soap and reversing the reaction to get some of the oleic acid out of your mix (that’s what makes the soap soft), and then re-saponifying what’s left.
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@Belassi, Cute idea, thanks a bunch. I will forward it to Luis when he visits this forum and hear what he thinks about it.@Bobzchemist ,many thanks again for shedding some more light on this matter.
Indeed, I’m aware of the “homecrafter’s” soaping both the (C.P) Cold Process and (H.P) Hot Process.
Yeah, both processes are less involving then the Marseille Process. The C.P is a mixture of NaOH + water + fats = soap + glycerin, demands no heat but takes sveral weeks to dry.
The H.P follows the same pattern but demands heat and requires shorter drying time instead.
At this time I am making C.P soap (5 Lbs) blocks 100% pomace, 25 blocks drying on the racks right now.
I also make 100% pomace soap gel (using KOH instead of NaOH) which can further be diluted to make liquid soap.
The tallow/pomace combo is also interesting, I looked at it earlier and plan to give it a try once I can find a steady continuous tallow supply.
3) Consider taking the olive oil soap and reversing the reaction to get
some of the oleic acid out of your mix (that’s what makes the soap
soft), and then re-saponifying what’s left.Sir Bob,this seems to be a smart hint that I was unaware of, could you please, if your time allows it of course, give some pointers to put me on the right direction in my researches.
in advance, I humbly thank your kind self and each and every single one that might contribute with a word of caution or advice.
Ameen.
P.S My desire to make soap noodles is beacuse I want to put together a full concept i.e I have a complete set of drawings to get made soap extruders locally, that I can sell to individuals that want to start a small scale soaping business. I will be offering the soap extruder + the soap making training + the soap noodles once I can make them, I will also stay available to help the future soapers until they can do on their own.
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Greetings.
Im sorry for the late feedback, i was stuck solving problems with a kettle that we use to make shampoo, at this time of the year is very difficult to find welders availables.
Thanks you very very much @Bobzchemist for sharing your knowledge ans taking time to help me, i finished yesterday the mass balance and the layout and your hint of ussing the small kettle to boil the brine seems the more logic . The resource you gived was very illustrating.
Thanks for your recomendation, i agree, Im aimming to do a good quality soap, but i want to beging this project focusing in a medium scale production.
@Ameen thanks for the videos and literature, i feelt frustrated when i read “The paste is heated at 100 °C for ten days. Heating starts up every morning and is turned off every night.”, come on thats about 14-15days per batch, thats kind of the same cure time for COLD PROCESS soap. with the only advantage of recovering glycerine.
Reading your coments about “mafiocarcy” makes me thought you were from my country, i forgot you said that you find pomace olive oil. Our reasons to make soaps are basically the same PM me if you find me usefull for anything, i couldnt make any test yet but i will do tomorrow and will post results.
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@Belassi thanks you for your hint, its a shame that for me is almost imposible to make legal exportations due to the need of especiall permisions. “mafiocracy” as @ameen said, by the other hand that problem is also an advantage for people like me that want to make cosmetics with available raw materials, not having P&G, Uniliver and Colgate&palmolive its like heaven for any cosmetic producer and a oportunity to learn.
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Thanks you very much to all for all the help given, and please forgive me for my poor english.
I found this information very usefull and wanted to share it:
Ghanna soap small scale:
http://www.rivendellvillage.org/Small_Scale_Soapmaking.pdf10 free pages of “soap, detergents and disinfectans technology handbook”, with Process diagram, mass balance and very well explained industrial process:
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One other thing. You might try adding small % of other additives to modify soap. I haven’t gone very far along these lines but I found that adding, I think it was 1%, cocamide MEA gave a soap that was harder, longer lasting, but still very good foam. The downside was that it looked a bit waxy by comparison with the usual CP soap. I didn’t try cocamide DEA.
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@luiscuevasii Pls check your inbox.
Cheers,
Ameen -
Greetings, thanks to all for the feedback and being so helpfull.
Im sorry for not being active for so long, i was solving some troubles with the shampoo production line.
I have made two batches and the results were very satisfying, the process was te following:
In the main kettle Melt the oils/waxes beging the mixer, slowly add the 80% of the needed naoh (50% solution), wait to the reaction to finish, add hot brine (60-70celcius) keep mixing until the soap begings to granulate, then stop the mixing and wait to the soap and water separate, recover the glycerin/brine residue from the bottom and start the mixing again adding naoh to 100%, keep mixing and repeat the washing process to remove the unreacted naoh.
Bassicaly i can confirm that it is possible to make a semicontinous process with medium scale equipments, the process takes about 5 hours to complete.
the result was a hard and white soap witch i extruded in noodles and dryed spreading the noodles and using solar heat for about 3 days, and then extruded again into a rectangular soap.
The first batch composition was:
c16: 10%
c18: 18%
c18:1 60%
c18:2 12% the result was a too soft noodle that was imposible to extrude in rectangular formSeccond bath:
c16: 29%
c18: 28%
c18:1 33%
c18:2 10% the result was a very hard soap that makes little bubbles and were very easy to extrudeIm going to focus to optimize the foam ussing sls/sles/betaine and recovering/purifing the glycerin witch right now im storaging.
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Hi Luis,
Please check your mailbox, you got a PM -
I just want to say, Luis, that I think you are an inspiration to others. You’re achieving a lot, while operating under severe resource problems. I am seriously impressed.
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@ameen Just checked my mailbox, forgive me for the delay.
@Belassi Thanks you very much for your mensage, its a pain working with resource problems, but there is always an alternative.
The soap line is almost totally installed, im currently waiting to arrive a “miller” which a bought from a bakery, and just installed today a Oven to acellerate the drying of the noodles.
Right now im having troubles with the determination of the noodle humidity needed to feed the extruder, if is too dry the soap cracks or comes out with irregular form, on the other hand if is too wet the soap clogs on the extruder (boths are a pain)
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Dear friends of the forum, I have a doubt about saponification. Glycerin is a side product of saponification only if triglicerides are present or it forms when I saponify lauric Acid?
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You can only get glycerin when you saponify a triglyceride.
Lauric acid is C12H24O2. Add NaOH to saponify and you get C12H23O2Na + H2O. Where in there do you see glycerin (C3H8O3)?
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