Part of the process of making Biodiesel includes the production of Glycerin, which is a by-product that's usually discarded.
Well, a while back someone figured out that you could make soap from it. Now I have customers all over the world making soap from their glycerin based on a guide that I sell.
I was out visiting a customer of mine this week & took my camera along. Here's some of the pictures of his cool soap!
That's 600 bars of soap your looking at...
Speckled soap!
Liquid Soap
Cool pink, scented soap (for the ladies!)
This stuff is incredible! I shower with it every day and my dad loves it! Because it's made from glycerin, it has incredible moisturizing properties to it. And, because it's made from lye (you know, like our great grandparents used to make), it'll take stains out of pretty much anything.
I even sell some that a lady makes professionally & people love it.
Anyway, figured some of you would get a kick out of some of the "practical" stuff that comes out of making Biodiesel.
1 comment:
Good Morning!
I've enjoyed your many posts on the bio-fuel forums, and stumbled on your blog this morning while looking for places to buy glycerin soap.
My husband has been making his fuel for a few years now. We live on a small dairy farm in rural northern PA. We run our tractors on home brew on our dairy farm, the only time we buy is once it gets too cold, but we don't use much fuel over the winter. Our own truck runs on our fuel as much as we can before temperatures drop too low and it gels. I think this is my husband's 4th summer of making fuel, so we have, like most brewers, a large stash of by-product.
Last summer I made several successful batches of bar soap, the best so far was one that I re-batched with traditional Castile soap that I had made. But all of them were nice, usable soap that left your skin clean and soft. I get very positive comments back about my soap. I gave that soap out to anyone who would try it. But I'm still not really sure I can sell the stuff. How do I know the methanol is all out? How do I know it's safe? My husband did some calculation for me that showed me that the small percentage of methanol that still remained after processing was nearly all lost (if not all lost for how hot and how long we boiled it). Yeah, I know we need to distill. So, then if you took that small amount and divided it by the 25 or so bars of soap one batch made the amount of methanol each bar POSSIBLY held is insignificant. So I get the math. But I'm a mom I use this stuff on my kids, my friends use it on their grandkids. I need to KNOW, not be pretty sure. Is there a cost effective way to test it?
Then there are all the nay-sayers in the soap business. The folks who tout the purity of their products and can find obvious flaws in mine.
I guess what I am looking for is a little reassurance that it's safe to sell and that people would actually buy it. When I type into Google "where to buy bidiesel glycerin soap" I get forums, which I am a member of, how to guides, which I bought, but I don't get home bio soapers websites, ebay results for bars and bottles of the stuff, etsy pages of sellers. I am aware of this soap http://utahbiodieselsupply.com/biodieselglycerinsoap.php and http://www.washtyme.com/ . But it seems to me if there were a market I'd be able to find more producers. I'm a teachers so I have the summers off and I'd like to play around with this some more. I'm curious to talk with someone who has a bit more experience than I do. Perhaps you have seen people buying and selling this stuff.
I appreciate your time, your insight and the help you offer those of us getting started in the bio world!
~Misty
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