Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating Foggy Massage Oil

  • Foggy Massage Oil

    Posted by choukr11 on January 21, 2021 at 2:36 pm

    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.

    SueSanderson replied 2 years, 4 months ago 7 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • OldPerry

    Member
    January 21, 2021 at 9:38 pm

    Probably some moisture got in the product or in one of the raw materials.

  • Pharma

    Member
    May 31, 2021 at 7:20 pm

    My fridge has a tendency to make oils cloudy/foggy :smiley: .

  • RedCoast

    Member
    June 1, 2021 at 1:58 am
    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.
  • Pattsi

    Member
    June 1, 2021 at 12:31 pm

    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. 

  • EVchem

    Member
    June 2, 2021 at 5:53 pm

    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

  • choukr11

    Member
    September 6, 2021 at 11:03 am

    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.

  • SueSanderson

    Member
    November 30, 2021 at 3:10 pm

    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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