Abstract
In this work, preparation of fragrant soap was performed by mixing rose, mint, lemon, or orange essential oil with "Al -Jouf" olive oil (a well-known olive oil brand) in ethanolic-aqueous solution during the saponification process. To avoid volatilization of the essential oils, saponification was conducted in reflux system at 95oC for 1h. The resulting soap was then precipitated using different volumes of 30% sodium chloride aqueous solution, filtered, poured into silicon molds, and left to dry at room temperature till constant weight. The resulting soap was evaluated by 1) reaction efficiency, 2) UV-Visible spectrophotometer, 3) Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, and 4) antibacterial efficacy. Results showed that increasing sodium chloride concentration highly increases the reaction efficiency. Colony counting method showed that all soap samples prepared using olive oil/essential oil mixture acquired good antibacterial properties, whereas antibacterial efficacy of soap prepared from olive oil only acquired up to 95.4% reduction of Staphylococcus aureus colonies and up to 89.5% reduction of Escherichia coli colonies.