An Important Use Of Caustic Soda - By: joalesto

Just for fun, I decided to enroll in this homemaking course that teaches students how to become resourceful in managing house related issues. There was a bit about baking, some cooking, furniture arrangement and making of common household necessities. It was really such an experience and I learned a lot from the course. What took me by surprise was the part of the course that teaches us how to create the basic necessities that we use at home like dishwashing liquid, candles, among others. What surprised me more was the making of soaps and detergents.

There was really nothing that revolutionary about soap making. What caught me by surprise was one of its ingredients, caustic soda. This is commonly known as sodium hydroxide, a substance that is equally as dangerous as it is useful. If I had not attended that course, I would not know that such a harmful substance is being used to create something that we use in our everyday lives.

The lecturer even reminded to us that it is very important to carefully monitor how much NaOH we add to the soap or detergent we are making as it could become harmful. I thought to myself, "If that substance is really harmful, then why include it as one of the ingredients in making soap?"

The course facilitator explained that the use of caustic soda for soaps did not start until the 19th century. Before that, lye water was used in making soaps. However, the kind of soap produced was soft and was difficult to store and ship.

Caustic soda was first introduced by Nicolas Leblanc, a French chemist. Later on, Ernest Solvay, a Belgian chemist, decided to improve the way how sodium hydroxide was used in soap manufacturing and this improved the quality of soap a lot. The soap produced with the new way of using NaOH was much harder and easier to store and to distribute to other places.

With this, soap making extended from farm production to the much bigger scope of industrial production. This started the whole idea of soap commercialization. That is why now we have a lot of soaps that are packaged to give softer skin which have different scents you can choose from. All of these just to make their soap much better than the others. However, at the end of the day, they are all still the same.

The facilitator also went on to discuss all the other uses of sodium hydroxide to make it less and less dangerous to think about. She said that NaOH has become a dangerous but very profitable business since it has been known to be very useful in other industries aside from soap manufacturing. That is why it is not surprising that there are a lot of businesses out there that become sodium hydroxide manufacturer, distributor and the likes.

It was definitely a very informative day. I did not only learn how to make soaps, I also discovered a lot of things about caustic soda.

About the Author

Jo is a content writer for 'Sodium Hydroxide' (http://www.sodium-hydroxide.co.uk), a site owned by ReAgent Chemical Services Ltd, an established UK based chemical manufacturer that produces, carries and sells a vast variety of high quality chemical. If your firm is looking for high quality chemical product like caustic soda then take a look at ReAgent Chemical Services Ltd.

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