Remelting Soap Scraps and Making Liquid Soap with Additives
Question
1. I would like to ask about remelting soap scraps.
I recently bought scraps of a famous brand soap from a factory. The scraps are thin, flat, and not aesthetically pleasing, so I want to remelt them.
I tried boiling them in a regular pot with a little water, but the soap was very difficult to dissolve.
Then I tried adding half a pot of water, and the soap dissolved faster, but when I poured it into a mold, it didn't harden.
How can I make the soap harden faster? What boiling method should I use?
2. If I want to use the soap scraps to make liquid soap for face and body wash, do I need to dissolve it using heat? Can I dissolve it in regular tap water instead of distilled water?
Additionally, can I add other extracts like `BHA`, `AHA`, or `Vitamin B3`?
Answer
Subject: Regarding remelting soap scraps and making liquid soap
Hello,
Based on your questions and the staff's response:
- Remelting soap scraps: It is generally difficult to effectively remelt soap scraps and have them re-harden properly. When you add water to melt the soap, the water gets incorporated into the soap mixture. While this helps it melt, it prevents the soap from solidifying back into a hard bar. Attempting to remove the excess water later (e.g., by boiling or filtering) is usually not cost-effective or practical.
- Turning soap scraps into liquid soap for face/body wash and adding ingredients: While you can technically dissolve bar soap scraps in water to make a liquid, using this for face/body wash and adding beneficial ingredients like BHA, AHA, or Vitamin B3 is not recommended or effective.
- pH Issue: Bar soap has a high pH (alkaline). Ingredients like BHA and AHA require a low, acidic pH to be effective. At the high pH of bar soap, they would not work as intended.
- Ingredient Stability: Many beneficial ingredients, such as Vitamin B3 (Niacinamide), are not stable at the high pH of bar soap and would degrade, rendering them useless.
- Therefore, adding these ingredients to liquid soap made from bar soap scraps would likely be a waste of the ingredients.
For making effective liquid face/body wash with specific active ingredients, it's better to start with appropriate liquid soap bases or raw materials designed for such formulations.
Thank you.