3.The diagram show a soap which is made from heating a mixture of palm oil and chemical x.What is the chemical x? @PRAETORIAN.10 @DanJS

Question

3.The diagram show a soap which is made from heating a mixture of palm oil and chemical x.What is the chemical x?  @PRAETORIAN.10 @DanJS

anonymous · Answer

A Nitric acid
B Hydrochloric acid
C Ammonium hydroxide 
D Sodium hydroxide

danjs · Answer

diagram?

anonymous · Answer

it's a soap

danjs · Answer

probably one of those hydroxides, i am just looking here....

danjs · Answer

The type of alkali metal used determines the kind of soap product. Sodium soaps, prepared from sodium hydroxide, are firm, whereas potassium soaps, derived from potassium hydroxide, are softer or often liquid. Historically, potassium hydroxide was extracted from the ashes of bracken or other plants. Lithium soaps also tend to be hard—these are used exclusively in greases.

danjs · Answer

that is just from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#Soap-making_processes

anonymous · Answer

it's D ? @DanJS

anonymous · Answer

@DanJS

kainui · Answer

Antibacterial chemicals aren't what soap is, but it can be found in it. What the soap actually does is allows you to wash grease and fat off your hands! Have you ever tried to stick your greasy hands in water and notice that it doesn't wash off very well? Go get some butter, put it on your hands right now, and then try to wash it off without soap.

Now this is important, do it if you don't know what I'm talking about! I'll wait and I'll explain it when you return. =)

danjs · Answer

Right, water is polar, and won't mix well with grease

danjs · Answer

I'm not sure which of those 4 are an ingredient in soap, but from that one web page , it seems like it is a hydroxide and not an acid, Sodium hydroxide was mentioned.

danjs · Answer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#mediaviewer/File:Soap_and_Detergent_manufacturing_process_03.png The green storage tank , NaOH

kainui · Answer

Yes the fact of the matter is the only way we can wash grease off our hands with water seems difficult. After all, like dissolves like. So we need a molecule that is both nonpolar like oil and polar like water so that it dissolves the oils on our hands and that itself gets dissolved by water to be washed down the drain! That material is soap, and so that explains the nonpolar oil, Palm Oil being used to make soap. But we need to make it polar on part of the molecule.

In order to do that we have to react something with it to split it apart. It has to be strong and it has to be a base, which just leaves Sodium Hydroxide.

anonymous · Answer

Thnx @Kainui @DanJS