Fels Naptha is a laundry bar soap put out by the Dial Corporation. Its small size at only 5.5 oz. is a plus over larger bulky laundry soap containers. The bar is made for pre-treating and for cleaning the first time around. This particular brand of laundry detergent has been around for more than 100 years. Other than the standard water and fragrance addition, there are 13 ingredients in Fels Naptha.

The soap that is used in Fels Naptha laundry detergent bar is a mixture of sodium tallowate, sodium palmate and sodium cocoate or sodium palmate kernelate. These ingredients are the standard soap base with sodium palmate and sodium palmate kernelate coming from palm oil. Sodium tallowate is the salt of tallow--an animal fat--and sodium cocoate is a cleansing agent found mostly in soaps.

There are two dyes used to color the soap, acid orange and acid yellow 73. They are synthetic pigments that add nothing to the cleaning ability of the product.

coconut acid, tallow acid and palm acid are all added for their fat content to have the soap completely react to the lye. These fats, along with the added glycerin, make sure that the chemical process needed to make soap occurs. Glycerin also gives an added benefit of being a humectant and keeps water in the skin’s surface.

Chelating agents are those that will keep the binding of minerals from happening and stops it from affecting the mixture negatively. In this product, there are pentasodium pentetate or tetrasodium etidronate that fall into this category. They are equally interchanged for each other.

Thickeners are agents used to thicken a product. Titanium dioxide and sorbitol are in Fels Naptha and fall into this category. Titanium dioxide also is a lubricator and a sunscreen agent. Sorbitol can act as a humectant as well.

Talc is added to the soap as a silicate mineral--an agent that has silicon and oxygen negative ions. PEG-6 methyl ether is what is mixed into the formula to make the soap base. Sodium chloride, or table salt, is then included to be a binding agent--one that holds the formula together.