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Can two different ingredients have same CAS number or INCI name?
Can two different ingredients have the same CAS number or INCI name but be different?
For example Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride and MCT oil, the INCI for both is “Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride” and the CAS number for both is 65381-09-1.
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5 Replies
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Yes. Just because two ingredients have the same name does not mean they are identical in composition. Often there are residual ingredients present in one that isn’t in the other. Or they have different fatty acid chain distributions.
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There is a number of different materials under the same INCI carbomer.
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INCI is not a good nomenclature, it’s just something for consumers to read on the back of a package. Chemically speaking, INCI sucks and lies… at least, it gives certain hints to what the ingredient could roughly be.CAS is more precise but still far away from IUPAC nomenclature and often refers to a product family (like many polymers). -
@Perry @ngarayeva001 @Pharma thanks
My question is particularly about MCT oil vs Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride. They have samse INCI, same CAS number and same IUPAC nomenclature “decanoic acid;octanoic acid;propane-1,2,3-triol”. Even some manufacturers say these two are the same.So What makes these two Products different? And what should i check to know the product i am purchasing is MCT oil or Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride?
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In cosmetics, MCT is usually the same or close to CCT, same hydrolysis of coconut triglycerides, followed by distillation of medium chain fatty acids (caprylic and capric acid for MCT and minor amounts of caproic and likely larger amounts of lauric acid for CCT), and subsequent re-esterification with glycerol. Given that lauric acid is a major fatty acid in coconut oil, MCT may contain more of that one. However, MCT is often just CCT because lauric acid is often used for other purposes and caproic acid is omitted because it occurs only in negligible amounts and reeks of goat.Cosmetic grades don’t really care for % and purity in some regards. As an example, stearic acid in ‘stearic acid’ may be less than 50% and palmitic acid being the main constituent. Only because something is called CCT doesn’t actually mean it’s only CCT nor does it give any hints on the composition like tricaprylin and tricaprin versus mixed triglycerides (capric-capric-caprylic, capric-caprylic-capric, caprylic-caprylic-capric and so on). CCT simply implies that the main fatty acids are capric and caprylic acid whilst in MCT there could be a huge amount of lauric acid esters present.Viscosity, melting/cloud point and other such characteristics may give hints.
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