Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating Plantaren APB surfactant blend - test.

  • Plantaren APB surfactant blend - test.

    Posted by belassi on November 28, 2014 at 7:27 pm

    The Plantaren APB arrived in a bucket. This is very thick (not pourable) at 18C. 

    This is a ALS/ALeS/DEAL blend.

    I made a 20% solution, which is recommended for a shampoo. It thickened easily with very little salt (around 0.5%).
    This is amazingly foamy, and with large bubbly bubbles too. Way better than anything from SLeS. Good hand feel.
    I added 0.8% of a Mane aroma called Strawberry Champagne, and it emulsified perfectly well with just hand stirring.
    The measured pH was 6 and of course one has to be careful to keep it <7 with the ammonium radical.
    So far so good.
    teejay replied 5 years, 6 months ago 3 Members · 11 Replies
  • 11 Replies
  • belassi

    Member
    November 29, 2014 at 11:59 am

    I tested this on myself this morning and it was pretty good. Since it uses such a small amount of salt to thicken, I think I’ll use CAPB as the thickener, because it contains salt and it’s cheap enough; should improve the foam and hand feel even further.

  • chemist77

    Member
    November 29, 2014 at 12:40 pm

    So you are saying it’s a 20% APB dilution with 0.5% salt and you have a winner???? No nothing else except the fragrance???? And of course I suppose a little citric acid for buffering???

  • belassi

    Member
    November 29, 2014 at 1:32 pm

    Exactly. As a simple shampoo it works just fine. No citric acid - the pH as it came was 6.0, and you don’t want it any higher when using ammonium radicals. I added 0.2% EDTA and 0.5% potassium sorbate. It emulsified fragrances easily, just with hand stirring. So far I am really pleased with this blend, it’s way superior to the SLeS/CAPB formulations I have been experimenting with. (I could get a similar foam profile to this blend when I added SLS (thus SLS/SLeS/CAPB) but that was quite nasty for scalp itch.)

  • chemist77

    Member
    November 29, 2014 at 9:03 pm

    Thanks a ton for the info, sometimes we can’t try all the materials in the lab and this way we can share the knowledge, word of mouth  :)

    Thanks again for your informative posts. 
  • belassi

    Member
    November 30, 2014 at 1:29 am

    You’re welcome. I’ll post more later, today I had to spend all my lab time on the sulphate-free.

  • belassi

    Member
    December 2, 2014 at 5:44 pm

    Continuing work on this. I tried a solution of just 15% APB and added a few % of CAPB. Thickened perfectly and a tiny amount produced lots of foam.

  • chemist77

    Member
    December 2, 2014 at 9:31 pm

    Great, I would try to find out that tiny amount with my own experimentation, but at least it reduces the number of ingredients and can be handy if time is a constraint. 

  • belassi

    Member
    December 4, 2014 at 1:19 am

    What’s silly is, there is little point in trying to do much cost reduction on the contents when the packaging costs more.

  • belassi

    Member
    December 18, 2014 at 4:06 pm

    Made a test batch today with what I thought might be the final formula %’s and it seems to have worked out pretty well. Still waiting for it to clear but it looks as if it will be properly transparent. I ended up using 20% APB and 5% CAPB and got a really thick smooth shampoo. Testers next. I have to leave out the aloe vera for one person because he’s allergic to it.

  • belassi

    Member
    December 28, 2014 at 2:30 pm

    Now working on the body wash which is basically the same as the shampoo only more concentrated. The idea is to be able to produce a similar amount and quality of foam as you can get with cold process soap.

    First test: 25% APB (this has got to mean “all purpose blend” I guess) and 5% CAPB gave me an incredibly thick mix with terrific foam. In fact it is thicker and foamier than my own blend efforts, in which I used 40% total surfactants and didn’t get a result as good as this.
  • teejay

    Member
    September 19, 2018 at 5:33 pm

    Hi @Belassi I found your old discussion through a Google search of Plantaren APB. I’d like to ask if you used a cold or hot process for your formulation. Thanks.

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