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Need help with gel turbidity
Hi guys, i have a question regarding carbopol gel.
The gel is turbid even after neutralization with triethanolamine, i don’t know what happened bc I’m not the one who was making it. The sample came to me hot so i suspended that the polymer chain maybe was degraded which affected the light scattering causing turbidity. Regardless of the reason i want a solution. I tried adding PEG 40, polysorbate 20, even ethanol, separately. Put the samples in centrifuge, nothing happened. Is making a new clear gel base and adding it to the turbid bulk would fix the problem?
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3 Replies
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For sure it can be solution mixing with clear gel, the question is what is the level for each one?
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Gradual increase, drop by drop but nothing happened except for the color was lighter.
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Sounds like an oil or similar lipid might have been added without pre-solubilizing in a surfactant cocktail. You used some good ones there attempting to mitigate but in my experience once that oil is dispersed into the carbomer gel it will not solubilize afterward. The other possibility is somebody added a cationic-charged material before the carbomer was neutralized. BTW, those cross-links are strong, it takes many months or years before they break down depending on how much UV exposure your gel gets. This is why we’ve always added benzephoenone-4 into clear carbomer gels for retail presence; 0.05% is plenty also.
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