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Cetrimonium chloride and sodium cocoamphoacetate
I decided to make a 2-in-1 version of my sulphate-free shampoo. It may be of interest that I noticed something: there appears to be a synergy between cetrimonium chloride and sodium cocoamphoacetate; when mixed they become very thick.
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11 Replies
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@Belassi: Thanks for sharing. Any ideas why that might occur? What was the pH?
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No idea at all. The pH was whatever is normal for those ingredients, close to 7 I imagine. I have not done any testing to discover the extent of the effect. It is of interest to me because of the expense of high-quality thickeners; I am always looking for thickening effects.
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@ Belassi thanks! could be useful
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@Bellassi thanks for the information.its quite new for me
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You are probably creating a salt with the cetrimonium part and the cocoamphoacetate part. I would be surprised if it is stable. Also, it is unlikely to have a conditioning effect since you’ve tied up the cationic surfactant with the anionic surfactant.
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But sodium cocoamphoacetate is an amphoteric, not an ionic surfactant?
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Yeah it is amphoteric and I tried with mixture of disodium cocoamphodiacetate and sodium cocoamphoacetate, thickens but need to work upon further to decide what it is going to be called
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I haven’t tested this effect with any other amphoteric surfactant yet. I should test it with laureth-6 carboxylic acid too, and CAPB is another. I’ve already determined that cetrimonium chloride works perfectly in my sulphate-free formula, no problems with it.
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CAPB will melt down the thickness, tried it today only.
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Amphoteric surfactants are ionic surfactants. Amphoteric just means it has the capacity to be both positively and negatively charged. It’s still ionic.
Nonionic surfactants are nonionic and do not create salts when put in a solution. -
My understanding is that an amphoteric will carry a positive or negative charge depending on the pH; that’s why I asked about the pH when it thickened. IIRC, it should be cationic if the pH is below 6, or anionic if it’s above 8. I’m not sure what it is when it’s in-between. In my limited experience though, usually you get separation or other unpleasant behavior when you combine opposite charges; I didn’t know that the reaction would form salts.
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