Make Soap Out of Guava Leaf Extract

for a Science Investigatory Project

Safety First!
This experiment will involve working with both sodium hydroxide and extremely
high temperatures, so it will require safety precautions and definitely adult
supervision. This guide will cover the important safety measures, but you can
alsoread more about sodium hydroxide safety.
What You'll Need
If the below information seems a little intimidating to you, you can try making
hard soap instead of liquid soap. It's a little less involved, requires fewer
ingredients and equipment, and is just as good as a science investigatory
project. For details on that, check our full guide.
Ingredients:
 about 50 guava leaves
 16 oz. water
 4 oz. sodium hydroxide (NaOH), also known as lye or caustic soda
 20 oz. olive oil
 8 oz. coconut oil
 a few spoonfuls of lavender-scented oil (or any other scent you prefer)
 a few drops of food coloring , any color you like
 vinegar (in case the lye comes in contact with skin)
Equipment:
 stove or other strong heat source, preferably an outdoor stove
 large pot
 three small containers (make sure they can all withstand boiling water!)
 gloves
 safety mask
 safety goggles
 whisk or stick blender
 strainer
 kitchen scale
 funnel
 empty bottle or soap dispenser
Make sure that none of the equipment you use contains aluminum, tin, or zinc
because lye will corrode all of those metals — and potentially produce highly
flammable (read: dangerous) hydrogen gas. Stainless steel would be ideal. The
sodium hydroxide may also produce fumes, so as much as possible, this
experiment should take place outdoors or under a fume hood. If that isn't an
option, make sure the room you use is well-ventilated (switch on the kitchen fan
and open every window you can).

The following guide will make enough soap to fill a bottle of hand soap, so
adjust your proportions accordingly if you want to make more.

Don't Miss: Bend a Stream of Water with this Home

Science Experiment
Step 1Extract Guava Leaf Essence
Bring approximately 8 oz. of water (weigh it out using your scale) to a boil in
your pot, then add about 50 guava leaves. Keep the water at boiling
temperature, and stir occasionally.

Image by Ai-ni Bautista/YouTube

Step 2Strain Out Guava Leaves

After half an hour, take your pot off the stove, strain out the guava leaves, and
transfer the guava leaf extract to a container. You can use a sieve or a pair of
utensils.

Image by Ai-ni Bautista/YouTube

Step 3Prepare Your Flavors

At this stage, you're going to prepare a mixture of water, oil, and your chosen
scent and food coloring (you're going to add the sodium hydroxide to this later,
making your soap). The ratios we've provided here are based on a recipe that
Ambra, a soap-making hobbyist from Iceland, posted on her blog, but you might
want to tweak it with some trial-and-error to get the soap to the consistency you
prefer most.
They Say Oil & Water Don't Mix
It's true. Oil and water don't mix — they're immiscible together. Heck, most
definitions of "immiscible" even use oil and water as their illustration. That's why
you usually need a chemical emulsifying agent to completely combine oil and
water, but heating your oil-water mixture, which is our next step, will achieve a
similar effect.
Add about 8 oz. of coconut oil and 20 oz. of olive oil to 8 oz. of water in your
pot. For soap-making, measure all your reagents by weight , and not volume,
because the density of different oils can vary significantly. The mixture should
immediately begin to form micelles, bubble-like concentrations of oil, especially
at the surface.

Image by Ai-ni Bautista/YouTube

Cover and bring the mixture to a boil, removing the lid to stir occasionally. Your
oil-water mixture should be bubbling from the heat, but better combined than
before.

Image by Ai-ni Bautista/YouTube

Stir, then add the guava extract. Stir again, and add scented oil, and then the
food coloring. We suggest adding the food coloring in small doses while stirring,
as it takes a while for the coloring to disperse and arrive at a settled color.
Throughout this process, keep your mixture at a boil. Boil for 30 more minutes.

Step 4Saponification
Saponification is a chemical reaction between an ester and an alkali, producing a
carboxylate ion and an alcohol. It's also what we're about to do next! That's
because saponification, in less scientific terms, is soap-making (the linguistic
root of "saponification" is sapo, the Latin word for soap). The coconut and olive
oil we're using contain esters, and the sodium hydroxide is an alkali. These react
to form a carboxylate salt compound — soap!
Ready, Set, Saponify
Put on your goggles, gloves, and mask. Adding the sodium hydroxide to the
mixture will cause the temperature of your mixture to skyrocket to temperatures
of up to 200º F, according to the Soap Queen's safety guide.
It's not just the sheer heat of your mixture that's now dangerous. That spike in
temperature means some water particles are going to reach boiling
temperature, and that rising steam will carry with it trace amounts of unreacted
sodium hydroxide, which is poisonous. If any sodium hydroxide makes contact
with skin, pour vinegar over the affected area to neutralize the burning alkali.
Using your kitchen scale, weigh out 4 oz. of sodium hydroxide. Slowly and
carefully add it to your mixture in very small amounts. Keep your face away
from the mouth of the pot as you add the sodium hydroxide to avoid inhaling the
fumes.

Image by Ai-ni Bautista/YouTube

Step 5Stir
When the mixture is no longer producing steam, turn off the stove and remove
the pot from the heat. Allow it to cool slightly, then stir with your electric blender.
Stir for fifteen minutes if stirring by hand. The mixture will behave somewhat like
egg whites, foaming up and thickening as your stir.

Image by Ai-ni Bautista/YouTube

After stirring, allow the mixture to cool and settle into a more liquid form. If you
would like a cleaner-looking soap, you can skim off the foam from the surface.
Transfer your finished liquid soap to a bottle or dispenser using a funnel.

Image by Ai-ni Bautista/YouTube

Voilà! You have your very own homemade soap.

CITRUS USED AS A HAND SANITIZER.
Introduction
Whenever the people’s hands used to get dirty, people used to go in
Search of a good soap and water. This used to become great inconveniences
specially when travelling. Water spills and soap not getting rinsed properly and of
course, water wastage, all these factors contributed to the discovery of something
called as hand sanitizer.
Background of the Study
We chose the citrus fruits to make it into a Citrus Hand Sanitizer because the citrus
fruit can have a nice scent. Another factor why we chose this study because of the
protein of Vitamin C most citrus fruits have from common illnesses like colds,
cough, etc. Third, Citrus fruits are easy to find and are cheap. Fourth, you can
easily find them from local grocery stores and/or markets per kilo, sliced, peeled,
mixed with other fruits, canned, and/or juiced.

Statement of the Problem

The researchers need to solve the following problems:

1.

How cheap will it be compared to other hand sanitizer?

2.

How effective is the citric hand sanitizer compared with other products?

3.

Does it have side effects?

4.

Does the Citrus Hand Sanitizer can make hands dry?

MATERIALS NEEDED:

½ CUP OF ALOE VERA GEL

2 TEASPOONG GLYCERINS
1 CUP OF ETHYL ALCOHOL
ZEST OF 1 ORANGE

PROCEDURES:
SCRAPE THE GEL OUT OF THE ALOE VERA LEAVES.
PUT THE GEL IN A SEPARATE CONTAINER
ADD 1 CUP OF ALCOHOL AND 2 TABLESPOONS OF GLYCERIN
LASTLY GRATE THE ORANGE TO A ZEST AND ADD TO THE
MIXTURE.

THANK YOU!!!