Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating General Mixing guar gum into liquid soap

  • Mixing guar gum into liquid soap

    Posted by Anonymous on August 7, 2017 at 9:16 pm

    Hello there, 
    I own a small organic soap and body care company and am in the process of slowly scaling up.  In the next 2 years, I plan on buying one of the large capacity mixers for my liquid soaps but I am not there yet and am doing all by hand with a hand mixer and crock pot.  I read a post on this site a bit ago where you were advising an individual who was in a similar position as myself on how to scale up.   Thank you very much for all the links to equipment and the fabulous advice.  I use guar gum as a thickener in a tooth product that I don’t want to use glycerin in so am unable to dissolve it before adding it to my soap.  I currently just add it extremely slowly and mix thoroughly by hand to get it to incorporate.  As this product is my most popular I am trying to find a better and more effective way to mix in the guar gum. If its mixed too quickly the whole batch foams and its a mess.   Do you have any suggestions on a hand blender that would move slowly enough or a better way to get the guar gum to mix into the liquid soap? 

    Bill_Toge replied 6 years, 8 months ago 1 Member · 1 Reply
  • 1 Reply
  • Bill_Toge

    Member
    August 8, 2017 at 6:56 am

    what you need is another non-solvent liquid of some kind, e.g. propylene glycol

    technically speaking, when guar gum and similar polymers are premixed in glycerine before being added to the batch, they are said to be dispersed in the glycerine rather than dissolved in it

    the polymer doesn’t start to hydrate until it’s mixed with water, and dispersing it in a non-solvent liquid slows down the rate of hydration and gives the operator greater control over the process

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