Teach Soap

Hello,

I have been soaping for the past 7 months. This question comes to my mind very often. Why can't we use sunflower oils in place of olive? Olive oil is really costly in India and I thought I would use sunflower oil in place of olive.

Sunflower oil is easily available and dirt cheap. I can atleast reduce the burden of high costs to my customers. What will be the life of a soap if I use sunflower oil in place of olive? Will it atleast stand 1 year without rancidity.

Please advise.

Do you have access to rice bran oil? That's a better substitute for olive oil. I do a recipe that is something like 40% lard, 20% coconut, 15% olive, 15% rice bran, 5% castor and 5% sunflower. I have read that sunflower oil and olive oil work together to improve bubbles, but I think that sunflower on it's own is more like canola, soy, etc and doesn't add much but volume.

You need to look at the SAP values of sunflower and olive oil and their properties. You can run any recipe through a soap calculator and see what the recipe will look like. You cannot sub one for the other without checking their values first and running it through a soap calc.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Yes. I do have access to ricebran oil. Anyhow, olive oil has to be a part of the soap I suppose. Sunflower oil has high iodine values which leads to earlier rancidity. But how about highly oleic sunflower oils?

I have not done a test, but common wisdom is that High Oleic sunflower is less prone to rancidity than the regular kind. Many soapers also add rosemary oleoresin to their oils to prevent oxidation, which helps prevent rancidity.

I would try something like:
40% palm or lard
20% coconut
20% rice bran
10% sunflower
10% castor