Project 17 Lab Report

Words: 1274
Pages: 6

The goal of Project 17 was to test the properties of soaps and detergents to determine the one that is the least damaging to the environment. Soaps and detergents needed to be tested in order to help an environmental group who is cleaning up an oil spill. In order to accomplish this main goal, there were several other goals. Before and after the soaps and detergents were synthesized it was necessary to test the solubility of the fats, oils, soaps, and detergents in different solvents (Water, NaOH, and Hexane). Once the solubility tests were over, the desirable properties of each soap and detergent were compared by a qualitative observation of their cleaning and lathering abilities. Then the environmental impact of soaps, detergents and respective waste waters were found by multiple tests. After the environmental tests, tests were done to find what caused the sum after washing. Finally, a soap or detergent was decided to be the best for the environmental group based off our findings. …show more content…
Olive oil and vegetable oil were the two oils used and lard fat and shortening fat were the two fats used. These fats and oils were used to make soap through a process called When produced these soaps have hydrophobic and hydrophilic ends which allow them to be better cleaning agents and react with water. Before the soaps and detergents were synthesized the oils and fats were placed into different solvents to test their solubility. It was found that none of the starting materials were soluble in water since the fats and oils are nonpolar and water is polar. They were all soluble in NaOH except olive oil and they were all soluble in hexane as indicated in table