Chemistry

Today marks the beginning of the International Year of Chemistry, as declared by UNESCO and IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry). This year we’ll celebrate chemistry and how it has improved the lot of humankind under the theme of “Chemistry – our life, our future”. 2011 was chosen as it has been 100...

In some recipes, you’ll see the addition of citric acid or sodium hydroxide (lye) at the end to alter the pH of the product. Ideally, our products will be between 4.5 and 7 (there are few products that fall outside these areas, like cold processed soap and some moisturizers with AHAs), and the citric acid...

Okay, so we know all about saponins – from yesterday’s post – so let’s take a look at sapogenins and how they differ. If you’ll recall from yesterday, a saponin contains two parts – the glycone, which is the sugar part, and the aglycone, which is the non-sugar part. When a saponin undergoes hydrolysis, the...

With all this talk about natural emulsifiers and surfactants, I thought we’d get into a little chemistry about sapogenins and saponins!  Saponins are steroid or triterpenoid glycosides that have amphiphilic or amphipathic features. They are grouped together by having “soap like foaming qualities they produce in aqueous solutions” – in other words, when you put...