Vegetable oils like palm oil, being the triglycerides of fatty acids, have a number of excellent properties and can be used to produce valuable polymers. Many of us may not realize that we are surrounded by polymeric materials such as polyethylene, polypropylene and polyurethane (PU). The nature of PU foams and products depends very much on […]

Palm oil is widely used in many countries especially in industrial and small scale frying activities. In 2006, our country produced about 15.9 million tonnes of crude palm oil, mostly used in food applications, especially for frying. The used frying oil (UFO) is either regenerated back to food-grade oil or used in non-food applications. One of […]

Transparent soaps are a specialty product. They are also called glycerine soaps due to the incorporation of glycerine to confer transparency, enhance the appearance and ease the soap making process. Furthermore, it gives conditioning effects to the skin. ‘Transparent’ implies the property of light transmission without undue scattering, so that objects placed behind a transparent soap […]

Soap is the general name given to the products of the reaction between a fatty acid and an alkali. Fatty acids are obtained from triglycerides (fat or oil) of either animal or vegetable origin. In soap making, the fatty acids used are the C16-C18 and C12-C14 fractions as the soaps made from them have effi cient […]

Microemulsions are normally isotropic (clear), have very small droplets (~8-100 nm), low in viscosity and thermodynamically stable solutions. In contrast, the ordinary emulsions are milky white dispersions with higher viscosity, with droplets of >0.5 µm and only kinetically stable. Thus, the unique properties of microemulsions have generated great interest for use in high value products. Microemulsions […]