A substance used to remove dirt, oil, and grease from surfaces. It is a salt of a long-chain fatty acid and made by boiling fats with sodium hydroxide. Manufactured in a batch process, fat or oil is heated with a slight excess of alkali in an open kettle. Salt is then added to precipitate the soap into curds, recovered, and purified. In the more common continuous process, the fat or oil is hydrolyzed by water at high temperature and pressure in the presence of a catalyst. The fatty acids and glycerol are removed and separated by distillation and the acids neutralized with an appropriate amount of alkali to make soap. Synthetic detergents now exceed the use of ordinary soaps, since soaps give a slight alkaline solution in water due to the partial hydrolysis of sodium salts, which can be harmful to fabrics. See saponification.