What is glycerin?!


Question:

What is glycerin?


Is glycerin from animal fats? I heard that I can be extracted from vegetable. How do you know?


Answers: Glycerol is a chemical compound and is a colorless, odorless, viscous liquid is widely used in pharmaceutical formulations. Also commonly called glycerin or glycerine, it is a sugar alcohol and fittingly is sweet-tasting and of low toxicity.

It can be produced both from animal fats and from plants. Since glycerol forms the backbone of triglycerides, it is produced on saponification or transesterification. Soap making and biodiesel production are examples of the former and latter. Until recently, synthetic glycerol was mainly manufactured at an industrial scale from epichlorohydrin though this process is no longer economical. Glycerol is a 10% by-product of biodiesel manufacture (via the transesterification of vegetable oils). http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/g... I believe it's a non-toxic chemical that whitens teeth. It's widely used in toothpastes that are not made in China. Those that are made in China contain DEG(DiEthylene Glycol) a very toxic substitute of Glycerin which is much cheaper.



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