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Quaternized fatty acid triethanolamine esters or esterquats are cationic surfactants, nowadays preferred over the traditional quats because of their excellent biodegradability. The uniqueness of the esterquats molecule is due to the presence of at least one ester group between the long hydrocarbon chain and triethanolamine hydroxyl group (Figure 1). This ester linkage is easy to … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more