Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating Hair Glyoxilic acid

  • Glyoxilic acid

    Posted by belassi on June 8, 2016 at 12:04 am

    Sorry to be asking so many questions at the moment. Has anyone tried this? Usage is 10 - 20% in a hair straightening cream.

    ADAMODEH1983 replied 7 years, 9 months ago 6 Members · 19 Replies
  • 19 Replies
  • Microformulation

    Member
    June 8, 2016 at 2:17 am

    Here is a Commercial Product with the raw material. Here is the datasheet.

  • belassi

    Member
    June 8, 2016 at 4:24 pm

    I’ll have to search. I can’t access that link due to location restrictions. :(

  • belassi

    Member
    June 8, 2016 at 4:57 pm

    It seems this system is pretty new. There are not that many products. The one found everywhere is Escova Progress, which has about 100 ingredients in the LOI. A simpler product is the “smoothing fluid” from Lisse. LOI (my suggested percentages - please discuss!)

    Water (q/s)
    Glyoxilic acid 10-20%
    Propylene glycol 5%
    Dimethicone 2%
    Cetrimonium chloride 2%

    ========= less than 1% line =============

    Guar Hydr. chloride 1% (don’t have it so I will omit this)
    hydrolysed collagen 1%
    hydrolysed keratin 1%
    styrene VP copolymer (don’t have it so I will omit this)
    polysorbate 20 1%
    trametes versicolor extract (mushroom) 0.1%
    babassu oil 0.1%
    preservative
    vitamin E

  • belassi

    Member
    June 8, 2016 at 5:04 pm

    My suggested starting formula for development:

    water 66.7%
    glyoxilic acid 15%
    propylene glycol 5%
    glycerine 3%
    dimethicone fluid 1000 cst 2%
    cyclopentasiloxane 2%
    cetrimonium chloride 2%
    hydrolysed keratin 1%
    hydrolysed oat protein 1%
    PEG-7 glyceryl cocoate 1%
    fragrance 1%
    preservative 0.8%
    vitamin E 0.5%

    comments and suggestions please!

  • Microformulation

    Member
    June 8, 2016 at 6:35 pm

    I added the document from the link you could not access to Google docs. It is here.

  • belassi

    Member
    June 8, 2016 at 7:12 pm

    @Microformulation very interesting and useful, thanks for that. I think my starting formula seems about right. 

  • belassi

    Member
    June 9, 2016 at 12:18 am

    Looking at the formula again, I doubt there is enough emulsifier in it. Maybe I should add 2% cetearyl alcohol and up the PEG-7GC to 2%.

  • belassi

    Member
    June 10, 2016 at 9:51 pm

    The distributor kindly sent the sample, so you can assume that you’ll be hearing the result soon. I only have enough to do one test. 

  • belassi

    Member
    June 11, 2016 at 8:59 pm

    Having read up on this now, I see that it’s inadvisable to use any of these processes on dyed hair due to the likelihood of colour change. I see that the recommended usage is 10 - 20% and that it tends to be an expensive salon treatment at the moment. Perhaps I should design one with 10% for home use and another with 20% for salon use. 
    Also, I’m thinking, can I do away with the dimethicone and cyclo. I have a water dispersible silicone, Silsense DW-15, I could use that instead, which will mean I can use a much lighter emulsifier system.

  • belassi

    Member
    June 20, 2016 at 7:53 pm

    Right. I have prepared 100mL of a simplified formula and we’re testing this today, I think. I thickened it with Glucamate LT. The pH came out at 3 - 3.5 so I am wondering, do I need a preservative at all? 

  • belassi

    Member
    June 22, 2016 at 12:04 am

    It’s interesting to see that Lisse are using the same active but they go to all sorts of lengths in their information to obscure that fact. I’d call their information downright misleading, actually. They specifically say they do NOT break the keratin bonds. That’s nonsense because that is exactly what glyoxilic acid does.

  • belassi

    Member
    June 22, 2016 at 4:09 am

    Also see this interesting Dupont paper. I had no idea there were skin care applications.

  • Bill_Toge

    Member
    June 24, 2016 at 9:20 pm

    I’d use a preservative just to be on the safe side

    although high acidity usually inhibits the growth of microbes, there’s no evidence as far as I can see that glyoxylic acid is in itself microbistatic or microbicidal

  • belassi

    Member
    June 24, 2016 at 11:59 pm

    I suspect it may be a preservative, because it has a functional aldehyde group like formaldehyde. But of course it might not be broad spectrum.
    We have one test result so far on the prototype formula. It worked about 85%. I am going to do quite a few experiments but I believe I am about 90% of the way to a finished system. I already have a suitable clearing shampoo formula and also a finish conditioner, so the other two parts are in place. I’ll create a box package for it.

  • DavidW

    Member
    July 15, 2016 at 12:23 am

    A few years back a customer had me develop a formal free straighter.  Made samples and told them to test on all hair types.  They loved and and ordered some.  A month or so later they called telling me people with colored hair (or maybe it was bleached hair) were having their hair turn copper.  I said I thought you tested this.  They say we did.  The one person we tested it on it worked great.

  • belassi

    Member
    July 15, 2016 at 2:16 am

    Yes, there is a known risk of that happening. I have read up on this in depth. I have obtained a good quantity of wigs and tresses of natural hair. The user should be advised in large print to test on a small section of hair, first.
    My initial tests show that I need to recalculate the strength.
    Thanks for your comment!

  • Bill_Toge

    Member
    July 15, 2016 at 8:34 pm

    @DavidW that’s a textbook example of marketing behaviour

    they’ll happily clear a potentially contentious product for launch if it works well on a small sample, but if one person in their department isn’t 100% satisfied then the whole project is likely to get the plug pulled on it with no notice, even if they’ve already committed to an order and paid for it

  • RawMaterialGirl

    Member
    July 16, 2016 at 5:03 am

    This is actually a pretty popular professional straightening system - it’s a low pH system and many vendors are starting to sell variations of it. Unfortunately, you will have lots of color being pulled from the hair on this and there is no way to avoid it. 10-20% (or higher!) is a very common use level. Also - there tends to be mercaptan odor in processing the hair. 

  • ADAMODEH1983

    Member
    July 27, 2016 at 11:57 am

    to avoid color fade or any change of it you need to add CI 60730 blue color.

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