Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating Can can you guess the percentage of surfactants in this product?

  • Can can you guess the percentage of surfactants in this product?

    Posted by abdullah on August 5, 2021 at 7:02 am

    I want to copy copy a water thin liquid cleansing foam from market.

    To find how much solids it has i heated 10g of it, after water evaporated 1g non liquid materials remained. I then repeated again and got the same results. So it had 10% solids. 
    This is the ingredients list on label:
    Water, disodium cocoyl glutamate, glycerin, sodium PCA, cocamidopropyle betaine, sodium methyl cocoyl taurate, phenoxyethanol, methylparaben, propyl hydroxy benzoate, ethylparaben, disodium EDTA, citric acid, essence.

    does any of these ingredients the property to evaporate with water? If you which one?

    can you gues the percentage of surfactants in this formula if total remaining solid is 10% and ingredients are listed in this order?

    About the feelings, it the skin feels dry after being washed with this.

    abdullah replied 2 years, 7 months ago 3 Members · 8 Replies
  • 8 Replies
  • oldperry

    Member
    August 5, 2021 at 9:58 pm

    My guess

    Water - 90%
    Disodium Glutamate - 4%
    Glycerin - 2%
    Cocamidopropyl Betaine -2%
    Methylcocoyltaurate - 1%

    Rest of the stuff.  1%

    But that’s just a guess.

  • paprik

    Member
    August 5, 2021 at 10:29 pm

    Not to question Perry’s guess (God protect me :smiley: ), but he missed the Sodium PCA. 
    If Coca-betaine would be 2%, so does must be Na PCA or higher. 

    Glutamates don’t foam very well and also don’t thicken with salt. 
    However Taurates do foam well and thicken well with salt and as this is water thin, there must be really low input. 

    Preservative is probably Biopol PB6 (Methylparaben, Ethylparaben, Propylparaben, Phenoxyethanol) - typical usage 0.5 - 1.4%. 

    Disodium EDTA - 0.1?

    My guess:
    90% Water
    3% Disodium Glutamate
    2% Glycerin
    1% Na PCA
    1% Coca-betaine
    1% SMCT
    1.4% - Preservative
    0.6% The rest of the formula. 

    Also, only guess. :)  

  • abdullah

    Member
    August 6, 2021 at 12:38 am

    @Perry  @Paprik thank you both. 

    Is it possible that some of these ingredients maybe partially or fully evaporated with water during heating? 

  • paprik

    Member
    August 6, 2021 at 12:52 am

    This is actually a good point. 

    Coca-betaine is usually 30% solids, around 5% salt and water (and possibly preservative?). 
    And I found that Disodium Cocoyl Glutamate is also around 30-35% solids, the rest water. 
    Na PCA, Glycerin, EDTA are heat tolerant. 

    As it’s water thin, is self-foaming pump used for this product?

  • abdullah

    Member
    August 6, 2021 at 4:22 am

    @Paprik yes it has self foaming pump. 

    Good point about NACL in surfactants.i should search if these other surfactants also have NACL.
    If it has 1% CAPB then it will have around 0.17% NACL. 
    My point about evaporation was about essence and phenoxyethanol. Essential oils evaporate when heated. Does fragrance oils evaporate too? 
    It has very strong smell. Maybe it has 0.5-1% essence.

    Does phenoxyethanol evaporate too because it is a bit volatile?
  • oldperry

    Member
    August 6, 2021 at 2:16 pm

    @Paprik - You are correct, I did skip the Sodium PCA. I thought perhaps they weren’t following the proper labeling rules. So, I just went with what I thought was a good guess based on experience. 

  • paprik

    Member
    August 6, 2021 at 7:54 pm

    @Abdullah - Phenoxyethanol’s boiling point is 247°C. So I don’t think this would evaporate (it does have really low evaporation according to google :D ). About essence, yes, this would probably evaporate. 
    To me, even 0.1% of fragrance in my shower gel is too much.

    @Perry - Yeah, I’m still naive and think that everyone is following regulations properly. :-/ 
     

  • abdullah

    Member
    August 7, 2021 at 1:02 pm

    @Paprik thanks

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