Waste Vegetable Oil Properties with Usage and Its Impact on Artisan Soap Making

43 Pages·2017·1.23 MB·English

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Undergraduate Honors Theses
2018-04-23
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Jenalyn Thorpe
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Honors Thesis
TITLE

WASTE VEGETABLE OIL PROPERTIES WITH USAGE

AND ITS IMPACT ON ARTISAN SOAP MAKING

by
Jenalyn Thorpe

Submitted to Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment
of graduation requirements for University Honors

Chemical Engineering Department
Brigham Young University
June 2018

Advisor: Randy Lewis

Honors Coordinator: Dean Wheeler
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ABSTRACT

WASTE VEGETABLE OIL PROPERTIES WITH USAGE
AND ITS IMPACT ON ARTISAN SOAP-MAKING

Jenalyn Thorpe

Chemical Engineering Department

Bachelor of Science

This thesis examines the impact of vegetable oil usage in industrial and home
settings on the properties of the vegetable oil and how its usage in soap affects the final
product. Waste vegetable oil (WVO) is often used to make soap as a way to be more
environmentally-friendly and create soap at a low cost in developing countries. Two
settings are examined: home usage (i.e. short-term, small-scale usage) and industrial (i.e.
long-term, almost continuous usage).
This thesis found that lightly used oil (household use) had little to no impact on
the quality of the oil, except for its scent. This resulted in a bar of soap that had very
similar properties to soap made from fresh oil, except for it was somewhat brittle.
However, when oil was used extensively the properties of the oil changed dramatically,
including a deepening of the color, free fatty acid (FFA) content increase to
approximately 5%, and an acquired scent. This resulted in a bar of soap that was darker in
color, and had less lather than fresh oil soap (by 1.4 on a scale of 5). The industrial WVO
had the advantage of reacting quickly with the lye to make soap, allowing the soap
making process to take less time, and for the bar of soap to reach a usable stage quicker,
most likely because of the high FFA%. These results demonstrate that using lightly or
heavily used vegetable oil in soap results in a high-quality product for a very low cost.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the help and contribution of my team members
through Global Engineering Outreach: Abbey Wilson, Connor Weeks, and Joshua Frei.
They were instrumental to making (so many) batches of soap, researching,
communicating with Porcón—and ultimately implementing the process developed in the
Granja Porcón community. I’m also grateful to Randy Lewis for his mentorship; to
Matthew Memmott, for agreeing to be my reader and providing support; to Laura Kneib
(owner of F.R.O.G. Soap) for her willingness to share her expertise on working with
waste vegetable oil (WVO) in soap-making; to Sam Thorpe, for his continued support
and encouragement.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE .............................................................................................................................................. i
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ v
TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................. vii
TABLE OF TABLES .................................................................................................................... ix
TABLE OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................... ix
1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1
2. EXPERIMENTAL ...................................................................................................................... 4
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................................................... 10
4. CONCLUSIONS..................................................................................................................... 244
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 277
APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................. 299

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TABLE OF TABLES

Table 1: Scale for Measure of Soap Quality ................................................................................... 7
Table 2: Linear Regression Parameters for FFA Content vs Time ............................................... 12
Table 3: Characteristics of Industrial WVO vs New Oil Soap ................................................... 222
Table 4: Characteristics of Household WVO vs New Oil Soap ................................................. 233
Table 5: Summary of NaOH (g) to Titrate 1 mL of Each Oil Sample and Corresponding FFA%
..................................................................................................................................................... 299
Table 6: Summary of Average HSV Values for Industrial and Household Use Oil Samples .... 311
Table 7: Summary of Scent Test Perception Numbers for Industrial and Household Use Oil
Samples ....................................................................................................................................... 322

TABLE OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Saponification reaction. Image is modified from Đokić, et al. ....................................... 2
Figure 2: Soap mixture at trace. ...................................................................................................... 9
Figure 3: Free fatty acid content of industrial peanut oil with time, with 95% confidence interval
bands. ............................................................................................................................................ 11
Figure 4: FFA content (%) plotted against time (i.e. sample number) for household use samples.
....................................................................................................................................................... 13
Figure 5: Industrial oil samples, from clean (0) to WVO (W)...................................................... 14
Figure 6: HSV values of industrial oil with time. ....................................................................... 166
Figure 7: A comparison of home-usage oil samples, from least used (left) to most used (right).
..................................................................................................................................................... 177
Figure 8: HSV values over time for household use oil samples. ................................................ 188
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