Metal soaps of virgin coconut oil: Synthesis, characterization, and its potential physicochemical sunscreen

What is it about?

Latin American Applied Research (LAAR) is a peer-reviewed international journal with the objective of publishing research with high impact in chemical engineering, applied chemistry, heat & mass transfer, applied mechanics, and control & information processing. LAAR, which is indexed in Scopus and the Web of Science Core Collection, has been recognized for its contribution to the scientific community with an Impact Factor of 0.8 and a Q4 in Chemical Engineering by the Journal Citation Reports. Scientists from Universitas Negeri Malang recently investigated the application of metal soaps derived from virgin coconut oil (VCO) as natural sunscreens. By reaction with various metal chlorides, they synthesized zinc, aluminum, magnesium, and calcium metal soaps from VCO. The products were characterized by techniques such as Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to determine their chemical structures. The study also compared the sun protection factor (SPF) of all the metal soaps and established that calcium-based soap contained the highest SPF value of 19.41, followed by zinc (13.77), magnesium (11.27), and aluminum (3.66). The sodium-based soap contained an extremely low SPF of 0.43. The findings suggested that VCO metal soaps, particularly those based on calcium and zinc, are promising as natural sunscreen agents. This research demonstrates the potential for the utilization of natural resources like virgin coconut oil to develop environment-friendly and skin-friendly sunscreen products.

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