Refined Shea Butter

For this oil alone at 5 % superfat, with pure sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or pure potassium hydroxide (KOH); in brackets, across the published range of its saponification value. KOH is usually sold at 90 %: divide by 0.9. For a whole recipe, open the calculator.

Compare it with other oils

This record exists because AAK publishes a distinct spec for its refined (RBD) shea butter, LIPEX Shea, that is a materially tighter/different envelope than crude shea (see shea-butter.json): fixed iodine value 62-72 (vs 30-75 for the broad crude range), a single saponification-value target of 183 mg KOH/g, an unsaponifiables target of 7%, and a fixed slip melting point of 33 C, versus crude shea's much wider natural variability. The saponification value min/max (160-200) is FSSAI's regulatory band for 'Shea butter (Refined)', which brackets AAK's 183 typical; the iodine value 62-72, the unsaponifiable share typical 7, and the melting point 33 are AAK's own single-point TDS values (no ranges given in the sheet). FSSAI's refined-butter unsaponifiable-matter ceiling is 'not more than 10 per cent' (used as max here; this specific cell required reconstructing a mis-flowed PDF table, so confidence is moderate, not full) alongside free fatty acids not more than 0.25%, moisture not more than 0.1%, flash point not less than 250 C, and the same iodine band as unrefined (30-75) - AAK's own 62-72 sits inside that band and is used here instead because it is the product-specific figure. FATTY ACID COMPOSITION: AAK's technical data sheet does not publish a fatty-acid table, so this field is carried over unchanged from Akihisa et al. 2010's 36-sample crude shea kernel-fat analysis (see shea-butter.json for full sourcing), on the standard fat-chemistry basis that RBD refining (neutralization, bleaching, steam deodorization) acts on free fatty acids, pigments, odor compounds and part of the unsaponifiable fraction, not on the intact triglycerides' fatty-acid distribution. It is NOT an AAK-specific measurement and is flagged here for transparency. AAK's sheet additionally lists (not captured by this database): acid value max 0.5 mg KOH/g, peroxide value max 1 meq/kg, hydroxyl value 5 mg KOH/g, density 0.89 g/cm3 at 50 C, refractive index 1.459 at 60 C, oxidative stability index 45 h at 110 C, solid fat content 20% at 35 C. FATTY ACIDS AND IODINE VALUE now come from one refined-shea specification (Heess Sp140031e), so they describe the same material; AAK's LIPEX Shea iodine value (62-72) stays in these notes as one product's figure. A shea butter's iodine value runs several units above what its fatty acids alone imply (Heess midpoints give 52, maxima 63): the triterpene alcohols that make up most of its unsaponifiable matter carry one or two double bonds and take up iodine in the Wijs test. SAPONIFICATION VALUE: the typical is AAK's 183, the same figure crude shea (shea-butter.json) uses, so the two records give the same lye. The bands differ because they are different kinds of band. Crude shea's 179.3-190 spans measured shea materials; no document gives a measured band for refined shea (AAK prints one figure and the Heess sheet prints none), so this record keeps the only published one, FSSAI's regulatory 160-200 for refined shea butter. That envelope is wider than the fat: refining removes part of the unsaponifiable matter, which raises the saponification value rather than lowering it, and FSSAI's own ceiling of 10 % unsaponifiable matter puts a refined butter near 177-187 by the composition argument in shea-butter.json, nowhere near 160, while 200 is above anything shea reaches. So the uncertainty panel shows refined shea with a wider band, and a worse worst case, than the butter can have.

This record is part of the open ingredient database (ODbL), which you can download as CSV or JSON. Found an error or a better primary source? Corrections with a link to the document are welcome at support@soapformulator.com.