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Plantaren APB surfactant blend - test.
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. -
11 Replies
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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.
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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???
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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.)
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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. -
You’re welcome. I’ll post more later, today I had to spend all my lab time on the sulphate-free.
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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.
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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.
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What’s silly is, there is little point in trying to do much cost reduction on the contents when the packaging costs more.
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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.
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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. -
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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