Reaproveitamento de óleo vegetal residual na produção de sabões: avaliação do potencial antifúngico pela adição de óleos essenciais

Abstract

The reuse of cooking oil (vegetable oil) for soap production is an important alternative for the environment, since cooking oil is among the types of waste that do not have a well-defined disposal method. To add aroma it is possible to add additives to the soap, such as essential oils. Essential oils have medicinal potential, whose antimicrobial activity has been extensively studied and evaluated by different methods. In diffusion methods, the microorganism is tested against an antimicrobial agent in solid medium, where through the diameter of the inhibition halos it is possible to analyze the results obtained. In this sense, the present work aims to compare the effectiveness of different essential oils (clove, lemongrass and cinnamon) for the evaluation of antimicrobial activity when used as an additive to soap produced from used cooking oil. The extraction of essential oils was performed by hydrodistillation using a modified Clevenger apparatus, then soap bars were produced (reusing cooking oil) with the addition of the different extracted essential oils. Samples of each soap bar were diluted and used in tests using diffusion methods (disc diffusion test). Based on the analyzes of the disk diffusion tests, where there was no formation of inhibition halos, it was not possible to confirm the antifungal potential of the soaps produced.