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Soap, Fatty Acids, and Synthetic Detergents

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Riegel's Handbook of Industrial Chemistry

Soap and Fatty Acids

Introduction

The origin of the word “soap” is traced to sacrificial Mount Sapo of ancient Roman legend. The mixture of fat and wood ashes that reacted to form soap was carried by rain to the banks of the Tiber River and was found as a clay deposit useful for cleaning clothes.1

The boiling of fats with ashes was recorded as early as 2500 B.C. Commercial soap-making was a widespread art in the Middle Ages in Europe. The invention of the soda ash process by LeBlanc in 1791, and the discovery by Chevreul in 1811 that soap was composed of a mixture of fatty acids paved the way to modern soap-manufacturing processess.1,2

Chemistry

The modern definition of soap relates to cleansing agents derived from fats, oils, and other fatty derivatives: the soaps are alkali and ammonium salts of fatty acids containing from 8 to 22 carbon atoms. These fatty acids are generally a mixture of saturated, unsaturated, and polyunsaturated moieties:

In general, two types of chemical...

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Authors
  1. James A. Kent
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James A. Kent

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© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers/Plenum Publishers

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Kent, J.A. (2003). Soap, Fatty Acids, and Synthetic Detergents. In: Kent, J.A. (eds) Riegel's Handbook of Industrial Chemistry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23816-6_27

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23816-6_27

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-47411-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-23816-6

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