[soap_newbie]

Hi all! I'm into soap making and I have a question about glycerine recovery. After saponifying the oils with NaOH, I add some salt water to the mixture, so that the soap curds float and any remaining NaOH stays in the water. Then the curds that I collect are my purified soap. The only problem is that in this way, I also 'lose' the glycerine, which remains in the water, along with salt (NaCl) and lye (NaOH).

How can I recover the glycerine so I can add it back to my soap? If I add some hydrochloric acid (HCl), I can neutralise the lye and produce some more salt. Assuming that this works, I will end up with a solution of water, salt and glycerol. How do I separate these?

Thank you in advance!

[Arkcon]

Distill.  Sorry, because distilling is a method that is neither cheap nor easy.  But it will work perfectly.  You might settle for evaporating, then filtering.  I'd suspect most ionic substances will drop out when the water evaporates away.