Sodium Palmate from Soap

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

There's also a 'comment question' over on the Subreddit, if you feel like reddit is a cool thing! www.reddit.com/r/ExplosionsAndFire/comments/cq5lhf/new_video_whats_was_the_easiest_project_that_took/?

[@joeydubbs763]

I can't imagine why you're frustrated...

[@ambiguoustvreference835]

You said possum and i was wondering how you werent cowering in fear from being that close then i remembered your an aussie and your possum arent terrifying

[@wesleymays1931]

You're making napalm with this, aren't you?

[@pyromen321]

This Aussie found out how to turn four bars of soap into a cubic meter of soap. Soap companies hate him!

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

E n d l e s s s o a p

[@Mp57navy]

EaSy WiN!

[@gitbig333]

Im crying laughing at this

[@Blowcrafter]

next video: possum falls into nitration mixture. Tom: So today we have another unconventional explosive

[@Felixkeeg]

I'm laughing tears over this, lmao!

[@alexfigueroa9993]

ajajaajjajjajajajajajja 😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@excitedbox5705]

Imagine if the fur turned into nitrocellulose cotten type fur. It would explode when you try to catch it.

[@AguaFluorida]

I honestly misread "possum" as "potassium". Jesus.

[@angelcosta4383]

Is he called Tom?

[@Adam-wl8wn]

Another painfully tragic chem video. I love them, keep them coming.

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

I got the colour correcting wrong again oops

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

God I look so orange in this

[@gudmundurjonsson4357]

@@ExtractionsAndIre that's halfway towards yellow and that's not good

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

@@gudmundurjonsson4357 orange ok

[@izzieb]

I just assumed it was deliberate.

[@supernaturalvn4727]

Orange ok yellow.... Fuck off

[@ScrapScience]

7:58 And I was just thinking 'wow, what a nice cat for coming over when you call'.

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

I just make the sound of a helpless animal and he comes over for the kill :(

[@mudzbe8414]

Fuck cats

[@softsmoken]

haha, my cat has always answered to his name.. i like dogs more usually but my now 18yr old cat grew up with pitbull puppies and he still walks up to my sisters big pitbull and smack her in the face and stares her down...critters are great.

[@stamasd8500]

The cat didn't come because he was getting called. He came because he wanted to.

[@stamasd8500]

@@mudzbe8414 One problem with that is that you're getting all scratched.

[@llamamusicchannel7688]

This whole channel is the sketchiest shit I've ever seen. I fucking love it. Keep it up.

[@MrWitchblade]

Points for Cat = 10 Points for Possum = 10 Points for Chemistry = 4 At least the microwave didn't blow up, but I would have awarded 2 or even 3 more points if it had. :D

[@cezarcatalin1406]

MrWitchblade Final score: 5/7

[@swupel3622]

Easy win! 5mins later YELLOW CHEM.!

[@JDPugs]

My exact thought at 4:00 Welllll at least it’s not yellow

[@cezarcatalin1406]

When you take 4 bars of soap and you turn them into 1 bar the size of 10 normal bars and then that turns into multiple other bars and the guy running the whole project gets overwhelmed by the amount of soap that it has unintentionally produced 😂

[@vikramkrishnan6414]

For the people freaking out about the possum: The Australian possum is a cuddly little marsupial, the American possum is what happens when Cthulu decides to create a marsupial rat after a meth binge. Considering the rest of the Aussie fauna, it is as if god got the address labels mixed up

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

Wait, American possums aren't nice?? The Australian ones are so benign, they just like dark spaces and sometimes their loud because they're fat but they're never aggressive. Except for Austalian Possums in New Zealand but... That's New Zealand's fault (maybe)

[@vikramkrishnan6414]

@@ExtractionsAndIre American possums are the preferred pet of Satan

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

@@vikramkrishnan6414 this is some new facts I am learning today, nice

[@RobertSzasz]

@@ExtractionsAndIre the one animal that got less likely to kill you when it went to Australia. The American version is like a giant *evil* rat, if you stretched out their mouth and added a whole bunch of needle sharp teeth. Oh, and they have the prehensile tail. They are almost exactly like a rat you would see in a nightmare.

[@SnowblindOtter]

@@ExtractionsAndIre www.bobinoz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/24359966_819581de1c_o.jpg Virginia Oppossum, buddy. Enjoy the nightmare that is our Rabies-resistant demon rat. And our possums aren't really 'aggressive'. They're all bark and no bite... they'll hiss and spit and show their teeth and shit, but the moment you shout "WHAT THEN!?" at 'em they pass out for like 30 minutes and hope they don't die. Hell, get them riled up enough and you can put them in a coma from fear alone.

[@stamasd8500]

Having had some previous experience with soap myself, when I heard you say "easy win" I started chuckling like crazy because I knew the pain that you were going to end up in. :)

[@bromisovalum8417]

I once had a similar experience; trying to prepare lauric acid from coconut fat, thinking "should be easy I'll just start by saponifying this here triglyceride with hot aqueous NaOH". The whole thing bricked up similar as to in this video, the more water I added in an attempt to filter, the bigger the block of "sodium laurate" soap obtained. I ended up throwing the whole thing. I did manage to get my lauric acid from coconut fat through a clever trick, a transesterification with methanol and catalytic NaOMe, forming the much more mobile methyl laurate. It could be appied to palmitic triglyceride fats in analoguous fashion to readily obtain methyl palmitate without going through soapy frustration.

[@Enjoymentboy]

Clearly displays label that reads 'Save Water" and precedes to describe how they will be dissolved in water. I love it. :)

[@DancingRain]

Your possums are cuter than our opossums.

[@softsmoken]

It was definitely different than the one barking at me from the dumpster the other day

[@DSoSJohnH]

Same here, ours are just horrible looking.

[@excitedbox5705]

yea that guy looked more like a wombat.

[@godfreypoon5148]

Our oporto tastes better than your porto.

[@firstmkb]

EXACTLY what I was thinking about Australian possums!

[@RaExpIn]

It's always interesting to get chemicals out of consumer products, but the other ingredients are usually turning any extraction into a mess... Nice to see that you got something out of it!

[@gorgikalamernikov3260]

soap is a mess even without the extra stuff in it.

[@theweaponofmassdisorder755]

So glad your back EF, video's like yours make the journey of scientific discovery so much more fun & i love seeing your process. Keep up the good work dude

[@shrikantpatil4979]

sodium: i am not your pal, mate.

[@markdombrovan8849]

1:09 I see Australians' first instinct still is "hammer"

[@charleschidsey6192]

I bloody love your videos mate. If all went perfectly every time I would have tuned out long ago. The best part is watching you devise strategies to deal with the inevitable fuck ups. Btw, your Aussie opossums are almost cute. The ones we have in the USA look like giant rats on chemotherapy.

[@mwilson14]

I look forward to every video you post man. You are always fun to watch and I appreciate how honest you are about this hobby for which we torture ourselves. Would chemistry be as fun without...surprises? I think not.

[@aidenallweiss15]

I just found your channel and i have to say its amazing so far as someone taking organic chemistry, this stuff looks really hard that you're doing keep it up mate!

[@cezarcatalin1406]

1.) Cut it in cubes 2.) Dry it 3.) Dissolve it in dry isopropanol 4.) Filter it 5.) Add sulphuric acid to it and try turning it into an ester (isopropyl palmate) 6.) Distill the product (~160*C) 5.) Remove the ester bond and turn it back into a salt (calcium salt this time) 6.) Add sulphuric acid again to form calcium sulphate and freebase palmitic acid. 7.) Recrystallise the palmitic acid from water and isopropanol a few times by heating and cooling the solution. 8.) Do a mass spectroscopy test on your product. 9.) Pray to the spaghetti monster 10.) you better be done now Sure, you could distill the palmitic acid, but you need to steam-distill it cause otherwise it burns itself up and you end up with dirty yellow chemicals that smell like shit. Another way is to heat it up to 180*C and bubble warm air through it to evaporate-distill it at decent rates.

[@Tarred_and_feathered]

My favourite part was when you spilled and blamed it on the microwave

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

Oi mate, it's always the fault of the tools

[@Tarred_and_feathered]

Extractions&Ire okay thanks. I appreciate it. I’m learning chemistry through your channel. We don’t like yellow and it’s always the tools fault. Check.

[@Volvith]

@@ExtractionsAndIre What was it again: "A good chemist is only good because of their tools?" ;)

[@theginganinjaofficial]

@@Volvith "a good tool never blames the chemist"

[@pyromen321]

Why’d you give up with the hammer? You almost had it!

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

I just needed to believe more, you're right.

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

The fact that the hammer was mt go-to first choice really says a lot

[@pyromen321]

Extractions&Ire, if your problem cannot be resolved with a hammer, it is not a true problem.

[@theginganinjaofficial]

@@pyromen321 wrong, if it cannot be solved with a hammer then you need a bigger hammer. Sorry for digging this up

[@Skoomz]

@@theginganinjaofficial nah you're valid. Sorry for digging this up

[@gfhrtshergheghegewgewgew1730]

ingredients for an easy win: 1 inscrutable soap block, 1 lab opossum, 1 beligerent rain cat (because in australia, australians are at the bottom of the food chain), and 1 yellow solution

[@bimbumbamdolievori]

I like your style of hammering soap

[@TomsLab]

No way! A real Australian kangaroo at 5:36 !

[@asvarien]

Cheese grater would have made quick work of those soap bars.

[@taiiat0]

sort of? also usually clogs up regularly, though.

[@abhigyanrastogi1662]

you monster

[@shazamshazamski4490]

I would have hydrolised the soap (Na-Palmate) with acid to form palmic acid. Used a sep funnel to get oily acid and reacted it back with NaOH to get the Palmate.

[@mmmhorsesteaks]

That would indeed have made sense ;-)

[@haroldsaxon1075]

If you saturate the solvent with another salt first, like table salt for instance, then boil it together, the palmate will crash out and most your other junk will stay in solution.

[@haroldsaxon1075]

Oh! Also, if you add an acid to soap you get entire oils back, not just fatty acids :( it bonds to the glycerine immediately unless you separate them first.

[@edymarin7781]

@@haroldsaxon1075 you can use "strong" organic acids (like vinegar) to avoid the esterification reaction between glycerin and fatty acids, because organic acids aren't strong enough to catalyse that reaction. I used this approach to get oleic acid from homemade olive oil soap.

[@echoberson]

Come for the macguyver chemistry, stay for adorable animal sightings.

[@TheBackyardChemist]

I was not surprised when your initial optimism of having an easy run was crushed by soap. Cosmetics, surfactants and mile long alkyl chains are often a PITA.

[@garycard1456]

You could (if you sincerely wished) make the aluminum (alumininininium) salt of palmitic acid. It has a rather interesting application.

[@piranha031091]

Sometimes, you just have to ditch the beaker and go for a bucket. Given your difficulty in dissolving the soap, I feel this may have been one of those times!

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

I seriously contemplated it!!

[@TomsLab]

And we all know Tom is no stranger to bucket-chem

[@terawattyear]

Your lab table top is like mine with some experiment in multiple stages of completion. When I don’t label beakers I have no idea where they are in the process two or three days later. Reduces yields considerably.

[@gabrielgray817]

You have displeased the moisture gods by desecrating the Moisture Care

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

I didn't care for the moisture enough

[@theterribleanimator1793]

@@ExtractionsAndIre the peanlty is an eternety of dry, itchy skin.

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

@@theterribleanimator1793 ah yes, so nothing changes, that's fair

[@geefyG]

*dessicating

[@gabrielgray817]

And yellow chem

[@ricdintino9502]

I don't blame the cat for staying outside. "Here, let me spill soap all over you."

[@ryanwilliams8272]

love your videos mate great chemistry thats easy to watch

[@dwaynezilla]

and cats and possums... can't fucking lose here. Well, unless things go yellow on you.

[@BothHands1]

the possum also made this video 10x better for me. i love animals

[@IAMSEYMOURMUSIC]

"I've had experience with soap in the past" is comment of the century

[@science_and_anonymous]

Also be like NileRed and make plasma in that microwave

[@JoshStLouis314]

Came for the (yellow) chemistry, stayed for the opossum.

[@FullModernAlchemist]

Dude when I saw your microwave was missing it’s turntable, I realized I related to that probably more than I should. Also I feel your pain on the “easy win” curse. It haunts my nightmares.

[@CKOD]

Having picked up soapmaking with a focus on the chemistry behind it rather than trying to make bars that look nice as a corona hobby, makes this video even more hilarious the second time around watching. Not even going for a passable bar of soap, so just making the palmate would have been the easy win. Buy palm oil, add in an excess of NaOH and water, emulsify the oil into the solution, wait a while, apply heat if impatient, crash out sodium palmate with NaCl, strain 'curd' and rinse with NaCl brine to wash the glycerine out.

[@kylemcguff5581]

This reminds me of dissolving potassium glyceroxide in ethanol. It turns into a deep yellow color, if you can ever get it to dissolve. Slightly changing the preparation of the glyceroxide allowed me to make a solution, with glycerol as the solvent, which dissolves easier into ethanol. However, it is a non-ideal solution with a melting point around 150C, and adding ethanol became much more dangerous. I hope to publish my biodiesel research using this catalyst soon

[@Ms.Pronounced_Name]

Tom: I need an easy win Also Tom: **attempts to overpower a block of soap with a hammer** Me: **makes popcorn**

[@11Rastafari11]

your channel is pure comedy ♥ i love to learn from you!

[@ghhg-je8wv]

cat is cute enough it knows it can draw blood with impunity. brutal.

[@harrykarr7563]

"I picked this project for an easy win." ...9 minutes later: "I'm bleeding"

[@GodlikeIridium]

"I have had some experience with soap in the past" Since when didn't you shower or take a bath? XD But yeah... a super long C16 COO- Na+ is not really soluble in water^^

[@frankulageralds]

I Found the easiest way was to Acidify,with HCl.then you have the Palmitic acid as a wax or oil.all the other ingredients in the acid water phase. bring temp down to 2C.Palmitic Acid will Wax out.Drain off Water Glycerine salt etc.

[@Arthropod108]

Double like for the possum 😂

[@karstenroelofs9216]

Palmate; a friend of Bromate

[@uncle_creepy2743]

i have not had that much experience with soap :)

[@nigeljohnson9820]

Interested to know what you are going to do with palmate. Maybe the manufacture of aluminium palmate, but I would be surprised if you are going back to making incendiary compounds.

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

Good surprised or bad surprised?

[@nigeljohnson9820]

@@ExtractionsAndIre I will be very interested to see what you do with it. There have been lots of KZbin videos on the subject, most have been rather disappointing as they do not make what they claim and they fail to measure its properties. Unlike Thermit which burns in a spectacular fashion, fuel based incendiaries tend to burn like oil. Unlike high explosives, there are not any pleasant constructive applications for napalm, it has no redeeming features. Its only practical uses is causing pain, suffering and death. It's a bit like poison gasses, the chemistry is interesting and there is a festination with their destructive properties and the danger they represent, but nothing good comes from their application. I will be watching because the chemistry is interesting, but for me, this stuff will always be tinged with revulsion. As I understand it, the military version of the incendiary is a binary mixture which is pyrophoric when mixed. The Napalm just provides the fuel, the mixture contains an oxidizer and ignition system.

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

@@nigeljohnson9820 Yes, youre right there. The tone of the video is important. We're not making it to show 'wow how cool is this!' It's really from a 'why on earth was this made??' Kinda thing. Maybe, if I can't pull it off well, I won't publish the video honestly

[@kmit9191]

@@ExtractionsAndIre I'd like to see a video about that, even (or especially) when the video itself is a disappointment.

[@nigeljohnson9820]

@@ExtractionsAndIre I am glad you share my reservations and understand why I find this particular chemical so disgusting. There is no doubt that military chemistry is very interesting, but we must never lose sight of the final application, particularly when the final product forms part of an offensive weapon. In the case of incendiaries, it is difficult to imagine the mentality of those who were required to test the product. Those involved must be completely devoid of any empathy for the test animals or the victims of the final product. I am sorry if this sound very preaching, but I find this material horrific, the stuff of nightmares.

[@jafogx]

Years ahead of your time with the soap cutting videos!

[@taiiat0]

it's fine that experients don't always go as well as hoped, that's fun too.

[@GodlikeIridium]

Lol! The first trying to hammer and then cutting the soap xD

[@ThCp__]

If anything, this video taught us about the dangerous Australian wildlife

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

The cat, yes, correct

[@facelessjack442]

This man really just tried breaking apart a bar of soap with a hammer

[@killsalot78]

you can tell he really needed an easy win after how long he tried hitting the soap with a hammer

[@grim3646]

You and Nile red should team up for some experiments. He loves turning everyday items into something different as well as creating those every day items e.g. fats into soaps and soaps back into fat. Don’t have any content ideas, but if I see you two in a video I’d certainly watch to see that amazing creativity :D

[@grim3646]

He is pretty big, though. So it might be a bit of a long shot

[@1st_ProCactus]

Your failures make my life bearable, Cheers for the videos

[@trevorvanbremen4718]

LMAO... Don't ever try boiling water... You'll BURN it!

[@Brightergiant]

I would like the record to show every single Australian on the planet owns those exact stake knives.

[@IAmThyOverlord]

Give us a time stampp

[@AtlasReburdened]

"Easy win".... *_"This is awful"_* Well, at least you called it.

[@ngsq12]

At least your lab's clean now...

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

All the glassware especially gets very clean after having 3 bars of soap in it

[@Les__Mack]

Thank you, kind sir, for another great video! I love them. :-)

[@michaelathens953]

Freaking yellow chemistry, ruins everything! Also I really like your cat.

[@sciencemodelaboratory7298]

Please make video on Methyl nitrate.

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

I tried, man my head fuckin HURT. might revist it one day thooo

[@DeanBiddler]

Are sep. funnels illegal in Austrailia? Dissolve all in water, partition against toluene. Save org layer, extract with sat. carbonate. Acidifying organic layer. May be mixed with other organic acids.

[@9279chomp]

Making mistakes is part of the process of becoming a professional.

[@jamesroseii]

Y'all's possums are much cuter than the giant rats we have here in the states! Lol

[@CowInspector]

No kidding the first thing I thought of when I saw the thumbnail definitely wasn't soap....

[@stercaalexandru4515]

I know the video is old but, My method was much simpler. Problem with soap is it creates a gel like structure, doesn't really dissolve but it doesn't really have to. in my case i actually wanted to extract the fatty acid (palmitic acid) I just added 200ml water for every 100g of soap. It got to a paste consistency, which is enough. I then used a 70% concentrated citric acid (any other acid also works, however i recommend citric, i tried with sulfuric but it is a hard oxidizer and it risks attacking the fatty acids too) I mixed the paste with the concentrated citric acid. At firs, a white foamy precipitate is forming, but with stiing it reacts completely giving an aqueous solution of sodium citrate and a fatty acid layer above. Now if the goal is sodium palmate,, reacting that extracted palmitic acid with NaOH will turn it to rather pure sodium palmate. Mind you, palmitic acid is not the only fatty acid in the soap, so fractional crystallization may be needed to get a higher concentration of palmitic acid.

[@AsymptoteInverse]

That's a remarkably pointy cat.

[@andersjjensen]

"Thank you for watching another train wreck of a video".... That's why I'm here! :D

[@SomeShavedSheep]

Explosions&Fire episode. Try dissolving soap in another solvent.. say, gasoline. Then immediately give up and add spark.

[@leplum2001]

10 minutes of my life that I won't be getting back!!!!!!!!

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

no refunds

[@DRChupacabrah]

just microwaving some soap and hanging out with an opossum in a barn aka doing *SCIENCE*

[@mshock9637]

Well you succeeded in making me shoot cola out of my nose when i saw you break out the hammer on the soap. Complete loss of my shit. Lmao! Fuckin love this guy.

[@ericmoeller3634]

ah yes put it right up against the microwave ovens magnetron output

[@bryanmcculloch1252]

Could you acidify and then dissolve in organic solvent? Just a thought

[@whywouldyoudothat782]

The possum and cat were fantastic

[@richardmyhan3369]

I love that aussie opossums are a actually cute. American opossums are terrifying. Ps, you're videos are great.

[@TrapperAaron]

That's some mink! Never seen an opossum like that.

[@smokeroot8008]

How are the epazote plants? I thought about the extraction and I think the idea is to soxhlet extract with ethanol, evaporate too dryness and extract with a solvent. How do you plan to do it?

[@grahambins454]

People make more money making soap cutting compilations than you will ever make on KZbin. This is a sad fact

[@Sleepy_zzzzz]

I'm really jealous, our possums look like hideous giant rats.

[@mattpeacock5208]

Damn dude, use a cheese grater on that soap! Quicker that way. An old one your mom or wife won't miss

[@heythere993]

I can’t believe this video is already one year old I remember when this was only one hour old

[@ExtractionsAndIre]

This is one year old??? Oh jeez

[@heythere993]

Extractions&Ire ya time flys

[@robmckennie4203]

jesus i can smell that soap from here

[@elguapo1690]

Man, Australian possums are so much cuter than American opossums.

[@siaa7078]

the lore never explained why the hammer had a foil on it

[@GodlikeIridium]

Fatty acids are always a huge pain in the a$$... The acids are super soluble in alkanes like heptane, but the alkali salts aren't really soluble in anything... just in water and methanol etc. But give this solid gelly mess in higher concentrations...

[@amykathleen2]

I’ve been beginning to suspect, having recently discovered your videos, that you are quite possibly the chemistry version of Jenna Marbles, and I have to say seeing this video confirms it to a SUSPICIOUS degree.

[@BradyReese]

5:58 that's not a possum, really what creature is this

[@CDCI3]

Maybe... Acidify, extract with hexane or the like, then NaOH?

[@faustianDev]

i wish the possums around where i lived looked as cute as in Australia.

[@Wunderbred66]

I think you need to clean your lab, I could only imagine how that affects you results.

[@jasonwortham4097]

thank you for all the happy ,and some joy ,mostly entertainment ,ahhnn ,oh the gits with Mia Zapata ,give them a listen ,dot dot .do it.