CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION
Chemically, soap is a salt of a fatty acid. Soaps are mainly used as surfactants

for washing, bathing, and cleaning, but they are also used in textile spinning and are

important components of lubricants.

Soaps for cleansing are obtained by treating vegetable or animal oils and fats

with a strongly alkaline solution. Fats and oils are composed of triglycerides; three

molecules of fatty acids are attached to a single molecule of glycerol. The alkaline

solution, which is often called lye (although the term "lye soap" refers almost

exclusively to soaps made with sodium hydroxide) brings about a chemical reaction

known as saponification. In this reaction, the triglyceride fats are first hydrolyzed

into free fatty acids, and then these combine with the alkali to form crude soap, an

amalgam of various soap salts, excess fat or alkali, water, and liberated glycerol

(glycerin). The glycerin is a useful by-product, which can be left in the soap product

as a softening agent, or isolated for other uses.

Soap is undoubtedly the oldest product to be produced specifically as a

surfactant and in its many forms continues to play a major role today. Within this

highly competitive marketplace soap is presented in a multitude of forms both solid

and liquid.Soap is the traditional washing compound made from oil fats and caustic alkali. One

can say a detergent is the one that cleans any surface. Synthetic detergent is quite

different from other kinds of detergent. More foam is produced with such kind of
detergents, moreover, there is less tension created on the dirty surface yet

emulsification takes places and the detergent nters the surface much faster. This is

the reason why the cleaning process is fast.

Soap is integral to our society today, and we find it hard to imagine a time when people were

kept sweet-smelling by the action of perfume rather than soap. However, the current

widespread use of soap is only a very recent occurrence, despite the fact that it has been made

for more than 2500 years. The first recorded manufacture of soap was in 600BC, when Pliny

the Elder described its manufacture by the Phonecians from goats tallow and ash, and it was

known among the British Celts and throughout the Roman Empire. However, these people

used their soap medicinally, and it was not until the second century AD that it was used for

cleaning, and not until the nineteenth century that it began to be commonly used in the

Western world.

Early this century the first synthetic detergents were manufactured, and these have now taken

the place of soap for many applications. Their manufacture is covered briefly in the second

part of this article.

Soap, a product with a 5,000 year history, remains an essential ingredient in modern living, used

daily for medicinal and laundry purposes, for household cleansing and personal hygiene. Until

fairly recently its production remained a primitive art, its manufacture being essentially the

treatment of fat with alkali, a chemical process which is the same whether production is done in a

backyard or in a factory. The simplicity of the process has led to its worldwide practice as a

small business operation. Large factory operations are exclusively based on the modern
continuous process, which produces soap in only 15 minutes but requires machinery that is

expensive, and demands close production control, a very large output is required to be

economical.

BACKGROUND
It has been said that the use of soap is a gauge of the civilization of nation, but though this may

perhaps in a great measure correct at the present day, the use of soap has not always been coexist

with civilization. Soap was first introduced into Rom from Germany having been discovered by

the Gauls, who used the product obtained mixing goats tallow and beech ash for giving a bright

hue to the hair. In west central Africa, moreover, the natives especially the Fanti race have been

accustomed to wash themselves with soap prepared by mixing crude palm oil with the ashes of

banana and plantain skins. The manufacture of soap seems to have flourished during the eighth

century in Italy and Spain, and introduced in to France some five years later, when factories were

established at Marseilles for the manufacture of olive oil soap. From 1524 till the beginning of

the 19 th c the manufacturing of soap develop very slowly, being essentially carried on by rule of

thumb methods, but the classic researches of chevereul on the constitution of fats at once placed

the industry up on a scientific basis, and stimulated by Leblanc‘s discovery of a process for

commercial manufacture of caustic soda from common salt. Mindful of the need to encourage

local industry, including a very crude soap made by an entrepreneur in Wismar in the 1970’s.

This product was barely recognizable as soap, being either too hard or too soft and rarely at the

right consistency. Never the less, it was popular amongst housewives as a cleanser in cruder

applications like heavily soiled laundry, yard and building wash-up and industrial type cleaning.

Its discontinuation by

the entrepreneur for reasons unrelated to the product was unfortunate and 3 decades later, the

product is still remembered with amusement, if not fondness, by those who used it.
This self-supporting attitude augurs well for the introduction of an indigenously produced,

affordable, consistent product. Besides domestic consumption, the demands of industries likely

to be started in the Region such as laundries and other factory

Operations will make for symbiotic relationships as they provide a potential market for a good

soap. The use of synthetic detergents has been increasing both in domestic and commercial

consumption largely because of heavy national and international advertising, but soap still

remains a viable cleansing product and can make a comeback in popularity, if its benefits and

advantages are marketed properly.