Abstract:
Soap, soap powder and detergente produces by unilever Sri Lanka possess greater market
share in Sri Lanka soap market. Through out the soap and soap powder making process the
total fatty matter (TFM) contení is required to monitor closely to maintain the specified TFM
in the final product. To achieve the correct TFM in the final product it is necessary to keep
TFM in all intermediate steps within specified ranges. The analysis o f TFM is therefore very
important to produce high quality producis. There are several methods for determining TFM
in soap and soap powders for rapid determinations various in-house methods are used.
First TFM percentage and glycerol percentage were determined for soap product samples
which soap from Rotating Disk Contactor, Centrifiiged, SWING (Soap With Included
Glycerin) soap and blow powder. TFM value of each samples were found from ether, wax
cake and light methods and glycerol percentage was measured from relavent experiment.
Because glycerol is stoicheometrically related to TFM, glycerol content is a prominent factor
that can be used to find a relationship. These resulte were entered to the M1NITAB statistical
software and got a relationship between TFM% and Glycerol%.
According to the statistical results for soap samples there were strong positive linear
relationship between TFM% and glycerol% in SWING soap, Blow powder, and RDC
samples. But results o f CF samples obtained from wax cake method are not obeying this
phenomenon due to their correlation is 0.310. Thus statistical data for ether method, it is most
reliable method for determining TFM. To find the TFM value rapidly for SWING soap
samples can be used regression equation, Total Fatty Matter (TFM) % = 47.1 + 1.94 Glycerol
%. There was a strong positive linear relationship between TFM and glycerol percentage for
blow powder samples, due to their correlations are 0.804 and 0.787 for ether and wax cake
method respectively.
Wax cake method gives TFM% tapidly than other methods. So it can be used to find the
TFM% for soap producis. But bees wax is most suitable as a wax than paraffin wax. Wax
cake method able to be applied to find the TFM% for soap producis.
