Foggy Massage Oil

choukr11choukr11 Member
in Formulating
Dear Chemists, 

Just got hired at a manufacturing company of cosmetics, and while making a batch of massage oil it turned out to be foggy, unusual. normally it's clear and transparent.

it contains  (A) Almond, Apricot and Sunflower oils and tochopherol, plus (B) isopropyl myristate and Green Tea fragrance.

What may be making the product foggy in your opinion?

Thanks in advance.
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Comments

  • PerryPerry Administrator, Professional Chemist
    Probably some moisture got in the product or in one of the raw materials.
    Learn to formulate cosmetics
  • PharmaPharma Member, Pharmacist
    My fridge has a tendency to make oils cloudy/foggy :smiley: .
  • RedCoastRedCoast Member
    edited June 2021
    Fragrance oils can make other oils foggy. Sometimes, it doesn't take very much. This is particularly true with fragrance oils that contain a high percentage of essential oils or is "100% natural".
    If you refrigerate your fragrance oils, moisture can get inside that bottle.
  • PattsiPattsi Member
    Happened to our Mineral oil once, it was a new lot from the usual supplier, it turned cloudy when mix with other oils - supplier substituted new lot for us and the issue's gone. 
    You should check your raw materials also. 
  • EVchemEVchem Member
    agree on check your drums/pails! we had a material that we later discovered was 'dirty' in the drum straight from the supplier- almost looked like water left over from a rinse was stuck in the bottom of an oil filled drum
  • choukr11choukr11 Member
    Sorry for the late update,

    In conclusion, the transparency really depends on the fragrance and the solubilizer, for some frangrances it worked fine with IPM, for others it needed defferent solubilizers, mainly Polysorbate-20 (Eumulgin SML 20) and Octyldodecanol (Eutanol G).

    For nearly all the fragarances Octyldodecanol (Eutanol G) worked fine at a % of 30 (fragrance + solubilizer). The result is a transparent homogenous Massage Oil.

    Thank you.
  • SueSandersonSueSanderson Member
    Opacity generally comes down to one of two things. Either the substance is absorbing the light as it goes through (which would make it dark, or give it color), or it is scattering the light. In the case of the above compounds, and your massage oil, it is due to light scattering of the surfaces of microcrystals within the solid. When these things get dissolved is no longer any sort of crystal structure, so there are no surfaces to scatter light, and since these compounds don't absorb light in the visible spectrum the light just goes straight through LSI.Good luck on that massage tho.


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