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Previous Next The best candle and soap tips online! TECHNICAL TREATISE ON SOAP ANB CANDLES. THE ESTABLISHMENT OP A SOAP FACTORY. 199 economical and improved manufacture. This is particularly the case in the United States, where new and convenient appliances have done much to improve the quality of soaps generally, while they serve to economize time and labor and so cheapen the production. Concerning the building much most depend upon the space and usually a good deal is required, as well as a large yard. The building had tetter be of an oblong or square form. That part where the soap is boiled should have extra facilities for carrying off the steam and the vapors that are not agreeable to people generally. It is best to have the large chimney situated in the centre of the building, that the kettles may surround it. If they are to be heated by an open tire, the furnace is usually in the basement, while the rim of the kettle is extended above the first floor sufficiently high to facilitate the stirring. This arrangement also holds good for the heating by open fire or by super-heated steam. Two Iarg3 kettles answer in most cases for a large business, so that two other kettles may serve for making the lye. The tanks for preserving the caustic lyes are :>eat made of cast iron, and are very frequently inserted in the ground. This arrangement is in itself convenient, room is economized and the lyes are always on hand. They must be well covered and it is best to cover them with cast-iron lids. The taking out of the lyes is much more easily performed if the tauk is somewhat elevated so that the lye may be drawn by siptions or by spigots. We prefer the so-called water levels, since between thesa and the lye kettle the apparatua for filtering the lyes may be fixed. These water levels or pits may eon-sist of walled and well-cemented vats. It is much cheaper to use barrels sunk into the ground and well cemented inside. Adjoining the boiling house, there should ba on the one side rooms for storing: the raw materials, the potash, soda,aud lime, and tlie oils and fats. The first room must be tolerably warm; the room for the fate as cool as possible. To keep the fats in the cellar is, on account of taking them up and down, not advisable, and in the building of a new factory is easily avoided. On the opposite side are situated the rooms for the soap, where it is cut into bars after it comes out of the forms, is dried, and finally packed for transportation. The upper rooms are most desirable for drying the soap. Since, for the producing of lyes, the application of the purest possible water is of the greatest advantage,the building should be supplied with rocf-gutters, in order to receive all descending rain-water into a cistern, which should t>e situated adjacent to the factory, and, by means of a force-pump, the water should be carried to the respective places. Besides this,there should be in the yard a well of good water. The following is a description of the soap manufactory for Marseilles Soap of Gontard in Si. Quen^ near Paris (Frame). —Although in Marseilles, which is favored by local conditions, the soap manufacture is carried on on a very extensive scale, nevertheless that industry does not there excel in especially good appointments. A more complete soap manufactory is at St. Queu. This establishment is situated in an open field, in the immediate neighborhood of the railway depot and the canal basin of St. Quen, and is in immediate connection with the Paris belt-road, and this with all other French roads. There are high airy rooms on the ground-floor. The kettles are of wood with bottoms of w rough t-;ron plates, and fixed in the ground.extendir.g to subterranean vaults, that their lower parts may te easily reached to discover every spot which may leak. The soap is boiled therein with surcharged steam, which is admitted by serpentine pipes fixed in tt;e bottom. Steam is furnished from three boilers of 25 horsepower, then carried through a system of drawn tubes (or conduit pipes) which, by a special fire, are heated almost 1o a red-heat. All labor being carried on on even ground, besides water and lye pumps, there is no especial lifting apparatus necessary. Gontard manufactures only solid (grain) soap, and its composition which in iOO ;s 60 per cent, sebacic acid, 6 per cent, soda, and 34 per cent, water, 13 kept very constant. This Boap is perfectly neutral, and therefore for the washing of the 200 TECHNICAL TREATISE ON SOAP AND CANDLES. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A SOAP FACTORY. 201 hands and for technical operations is excellent. Especially olive-, sesame-, and ground-nut oil are worked into soap; the latter oil is pressed in the establishment itself, the former brought from the south of France. Caustic soda lye is preserved of various degrees of strength in five large, immured, water-tight kettles. By mixing, a lye is obtained of the medium strength, which is = 10° 13., and the dry alkali used is usually 30 per cent, caustic soda, about 9 per cent, sulphate of soda, 6 to 8 per cent, sulphite of soda, 4 to 7 per cent, carbonate of soda, and 6 to 10 per cent, culinary salt, while the rest consists of water. Two kettles are always used for boiling the soap at the same time. In each are filled 1500 litres (330 gals.) lye of medium strength, which is gently heated by the steam worm. Thereupon the barrels, which contain in the aggre-grate about 3500 litres (770 gals-.) of oil, are rolled over a conduit lined with lead, which is inclined towards the boiler. They are tapped, the oil runs into the canal, and flows thence into the kettles. Here it meets the tolerably warm lye, and now the formation of soap-paste soon takes place. In this manner the combining of the sebacic acids with the alkali progresses, the mass thickens, and, if after 24 to 28 hours, the sapouifi-cation proves sufficiently advanced and the caustic soda amply bound, they proceed with the first cutting of the pan or separation. On this first operation of saponifying (empdtac/e) success mostly depends. The boiling is now interrupted, and 600 to 800 litres (132 to 176 gals.) salted lye are put into the kettle, while the soap is pushed together with a square piece of board of about 90 centimetres (3.51 inches) long, which is fastened to a long stick, and thus is the lye incorporated. The mass becomes grainy, the superfluous water, the separated glycerine, and the uncornbined salts separate, as sub-lye. The steam is completely turned off, and the mass is left for a few hours to settle, whereupon the lye, by means of the opening of a conical valve situated on the bottom, is permitted to run off. It may be condensed, and, after separating the salts, Previous Next
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