ICE BATH TO MAKE THICK BODY CREAM

Formulating

ICE BATH TO MAKE THICK BODY CREAM

Posted by MarkHkang on November 24, 2014 at 6:02 pm

Hello,

Has anyone tried to make body butter via ice bath?

I am very new to this field, and I have been trying to reverse engineer AHAVA’s body butter like so many times (I don’t know if anyone has tried it),

but I haven’t yet had a luck. AVAHA’s body butter is very thick. I can’t even get it closer in thickness by adjusting the amount of ingredients.

So I was thinking as soon as I melt both water phase and oil phase and mix them, I should put the mixture into a ice bath to quickly cool down to get the thickness I want, while mixing.

I am curious if anyone has tried something like this.

Any insight would help me by a lot!

Thank you.

belassi replied 9 years, 11 months ago 8 Members · 20 Replies
20 Replies

Chemist77

Member
November 25, 2014 at 12:06 am

I am not aware of this kinda technology but what we have read and experienced is that the thickness very much depends on the waxes and oils (including oil phase thickeners) along with the emulsifiers you choose and the thickener for water phase e.g. carbomers, cellulose or any other polymer. Lets suppose that even if your assumption works then what would happen when you bring down the temperature, it would get back to its most relaxed phase that is the natural phase.

Of course it’s a different thing though if you are working and living under sub-zero temperatures.
Bobzchemist

Member
November 25, 2014 at 12:41 am

Ice bath/crash cooling will make your product thinner, not thicker.

Please post your formula
Chemist77

Member
November 25, 2014 at 12:49 am

Ah the crash cooling, we have it too and use for our emulsions and but as such have not seen an over the board viscosity shoot up. My emulsions are both ionics and non-ionics. Forgot to mention that our supposedly crash cooling involves pumping water to the hot emulsion and the temperature of water is around 35°C-40°C and it works great to give a good viscosity.
MarkHkang

Member
November 25, 2014 at 11:31 am

Thank you for your comments @Bobzchemist and @milliachemist !!

Didn’t know it was called crash cooling.

As I said, AHAVA’s thickness is not viscous, it just feels like whipped butter.

here is the LOI: water, vegetable oil, shea butter, cyclomethicone, ethylhexyl palmitate, stearyl alcohol, peg-40 stearate, glycerin, sodium lactate, cetearyl olivate & sorbitan olivate, c10-18 triglycerides, sorbitan tristearate, cetyl palmitate & sorbitan palmitate, caprylyl glycol & chlorphenesin @ phenoxyethanol, peach kernel oil & hydrogenated vegetable oil, aloe barbadensis leaf juice, propylene carbonate & quaternium-18 hectorite, dead sea water, parfum, allantoin, dimethicone & dimethiconol, xanthan gum, flower extract, fig extract, oblipicha fruit oil, pvp, benzyl salicylate, butylphenyl methylpropional, citral, citronellol, hexyl cinnamal, limonene

latest formula that I have come up with:

water: 43

vege oil: 14

shea butter: 8

cyclomethicone: 5

ethylhexyl palmitate : 4

stearyl alcohol: 3.6

peg-40 stearate: 3

glycerin: 2.8

sodium lactate: 2.7

cetearyl olivate & sorbitan olivate (i used olivem 1000) 2.5

c10-18 triglycerides: 2.2

cetyl palmitate& sorbitan palmitate: 1.8

caprylyl glycol & chlorphensin & phenoxyethanol 1

peach butter: 1

quaternium-18 hectorite: 0.8

dimethicone” 0.6

xanthan gum 0.3

These are the only ingredients I have put into my formula thinking the rest wouldn’t have significant impacts.

Here is the process I have tried: heated up both oil and water phase up to 75 ‘c. As soon as oil and water phase are combined, i put the mixture into ice bath (crash cooling), mixing with homogenizer.

So should I try without the ice bath, but mix them in ambient temperature? Would it give the desired thickness? I am so confused now. The company I work is so small that I have no one to ask.

Any insights?
Chemist77

Member
November 25, 2014 at 12:00 pm

Bentone Gel VS-5 PC has to be used in a higher quantity here (let’s say 3-5% to start with) and this would give you the desired thickness, though I am not pretty sure about the whipped butter appearance. I have used in few of my foundations and it worked absolutely great though I was a big fan of Bentone Gel ISD V. I am guessing that the LOI you have mentioned has Bentone Gel VS-5 PC and with a little play of other thickeners and waxes you can achieve the desired properties.
Ruben

Member
December 1, 2014 at 2:49 pm

@Bobzchemist and @milliachemist Do you guys mind explaining the advantage of using crash cooling? Is this related to PIT and used to get small droplet size? Does it work with non-ethoxylated emulsifiers? Thank you
Ruben

Member
December 10, 2014 at 9:26 pm

Can anyone offer some some explanation to my previous question about crash cooling?
Thank you
belassi

Member
December 11, 2014 at 12:51 am

It isn’t really that difficult to get body butter consistency. It is a matter of using a good combination of lipids. Typically you want to use a high quality beneficial solid lipid such as shea butter. I’d have to root around to find it but as I recall, my first ‘cream’ was so thick it was actually a butter, and it was around 10% shea butter, with cetyl alcohol and stearic acid and glyceryl monostearate as the emulsifier. It was lovely, but you could only use it occasionally because it was so rich.
Ruben

Member
December 11, 2014 at 9:48 am

@Belassi My question is more about the advantage of cooling a lotion fast instead of applying slow cooling. I read quite a bit about using fast cooling in the case of emulsifiers that go through phase inversion to get small droplets and therefore a more stable emulsion. However, I wasn’t aware of the benefit of using this technique for non ethoxylated emulsifiers, which according to what I understand, do not go through phase inversion
Bobzchemist

Member
December 11, 2014 at 10:50 am

First of all, crash or forced cooling is mostly a lab trick - it’s almost impossible (and very expensive) to get it to work in a production environment. It does improve stability, but since you can’t make it work at sizes above 5 gallons, there’s not a lot of point to it.

Second, crash cooling does two, maybe three things to an emulsion.

1) Keeps the droplet size small - without an extended cooling time, the emulsion droplets don’t have the time to bump into each other and coalesce. The smaller the internal phase droplets are, the more stable the emulsion is, all other things being equal.

2) Reduces the wax crystal size - fatty acids, alcohols and other waxes grow crystals slowly as the batch cools, but the crystal growth stops once the batch temperature has dropped low enough. The faster you cool down to that point, the smaller the crystals, and the thinner the batch.
David

Member
December 11, 2014 at 12:21 pm

I thought this was a common production method - for a hard cream/wax in order to fill it faster(when it is still fluid). When I do it in the lab it is only to save time, but it risky with emulsions since you can end up with different properties as stated above.
Bobzchemist

Member
December 11, 2014 at 2:01 pm

@David, cooling with an ice/water bath for a lab size batch (1-5 kilos) produces a rate of cooling that can’t possibly be replicated on a production scale, except under special conditions. (Cooling individual hot-filled components through a cooling tunnel, for example.)

Cooling a production size batch (25 kilo plus) can be done with ambient air cooling, tap water cooling, or refrigerated water cooling, but none of those methods can even come close to comparing to what happens in the lab with an ice bath.
nasrins

Member
December 11, 2014 at 2:32 pm

@bobzchemist the other option is liquid nitrigen
Bobzchemist

Member
December 11, 2014 at 5:23 pm

And wouldn’t THAT be fun…although it does make awesome instant ice cream. http://chemistry.about.com/od/demonstrationsexperiments/ht/n2icecream.htm 
Ruben

Member
December 12, 2014 at 12:57 pm

Thank you Robert!
Bobzchemist

Member
December 12, 2014 at 5:12 pm

No problem, Ruben.

To get back to Mark’s original question - most body butter is just a mixture of oils and waxes. Do you absolutely have to have water in your formula? It introduces so many problems…

Next, some thoughts on reverse-engineering an emulsion - there are three or four really useful bits of information that you can obtain with minimal amounts of equipment:

Emulsion type: Is it w/o or o/w? determined by pH and dilution tests, mostly.

Solids content: Hold uncovered at 110C for two hours or until weight stops changing

Oil level: how much of residue from solids test will dissolve in a volatile solvent?

Anyone have any others?
Iaskedbetter

Member
December 12, 2014 at 5:21 pm

Viscosity would be another good test for the sake of comparison.

@Robert can you elaborate a little bit on the Oil level test (how it works/how it is generally performed)? I haven’t heard of that one before and it seems very useful.
belassi

Member
December 12, 2014 at 7:13 pm

Excellent, thanks for that.

Considering the reason to do crash cooling - to get small droplet size - couldn’t you achieve this using an ultrasonic mixing head? I believe that stable emulsions can be formed using ultrasonic means, even without an emulsifier.
Chemist77

Member
December 12, 2014 at 9:29 pm

@Iaskedbetter

I think you have to mix the residue solids in a pre-weighed quantity of volatile solvent, filter out the undissolved part and leave the volatile solvent open to evaporate. Check how much time it takes for the solvent to evaporate completely and weigh the remaining part. It would give you an idea about NON-VOLATILE oils in the emulsion.

@Bobzchemist Any further modifications/inputs on above??????
belassi

Member
December 12, 2014 at 9:43 pm

Now this might be useful in the lab…

I especially like the temperature control to 176F (80C) and the capacity (6L). 150W is quite a high ultrasonic power level so it should be able to easily produce many types of emulsion. Also, that power level of ultrasonics is going to kill any kind of organism that might be present. I think I would definitely wear ear protection. Or even leave the room!