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Need some help with percentages in liquid foaming dish soap
Hello All and thank you in advance for your time. I’m trying to formulate a liquid dish soap and have honed down the ingredients I’d like to use. My only issue is that I’m having a bit of a time trying to figure out what percentage I should you to both make it foam well, be very effective at removing oils and gunk while also keeping it financially economical to produce. Any help would be extremely appreciated. The list of ingredients are below:
water
cocamidopropyl hydroxysultaine
lauramine oxide
decylglucoside
lauryl glucoside
sodium lauroyl sarcosinate
glycerin
methylisothiazolinone
Thank you all again!
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29 Replies
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I see that you are aiming at a very biodegradable formula, nice - try to read up on Berol 611 (readily biodegradable raw material). For high-end dishwashing liquids you aim at a active percentage of about 28%, interim formulations at about 16% active. Many companies still use Sulphonic Acid/SLES based formulations which is easily thickened by using salt. You’ll probably will break the viscosity if you water-down your formula.
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Thank you for the information. Do you think maybe you would have some time in the future to maybe walk me through how you would blend these ingredients to achieve a foaming dish soap? Thank you very much in advance.
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I’m glad to assist.
I’ll stick to the LAS/SLES based formulations - this is anionic based, meaning you’ll have a negative charged molecule to aid as a degreaser. Also look at incorporating D-Limonene, although it is a allergen it increases your degreasing capability within your formulation - the other important thing that I’m missing in your formula is a chelating agent - the water hardness plays an important roll as it will interfere with the detergent’s ability to fully capitalize on the detergent’s cleaning ability. So, make sure you use purified water from the start - this is obtained by either reverse osmosis or deionized water, then with the addition of a chelating agent so, when you use your product and mix it with hard water the efficacy isn’t hampered due to hard water being used.
For a chelating agent look: Tetrasodium Glutamate Diacetate. Dissolvine® GL-47-S by Nouryon. It is a high purity, versatile and readily biodegradable chelate based upon L-glutamic acid, a natural and it is a renewable raw material.
Then regarding your preservative - try to incorporate a blend (render a broad spectrum preservative (NS not for use in cosmetics), I use a chemical called Actichem LA 1220, this is a blend of 5-chloro-2-methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (CIT), 2-methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (MIT) and Bromonitropropane diol (Bronopol) - you’ll only need to use 0.05% within your formulation.
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Honestly, I can’t thank you enough for all the great input and help. The key importance of the ingredients in this product is to keep it natural/plant derived (at least as much as we can) and absolutely aroma/fragrance free. This product will be marketed at a specific niche segment that is buying it specifically for the purpose of tough cleaning of certain utensils without it imparting any smells or flavors onto the cleaned utensils that normal dish soaps or dishwasher would causing a less then satisfactory experience when using these utensils as they would ruin the experience because of imparting aroma or flavors from the soap. If you would have some time, I’d love to speak with you possibly through whatsapp or telegram if you didn’t mind. Regardless, I just wanted to again thank you sincerely for all the help you’ve already provided.
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Look at NANSA PC38 G MB manufactured by Innospec - it is an aqueous solution of a potassium fatty acid soap, try this with a combination with Berol 611. If you want a biodegradable preservative look at Sodium Benzoate (used in the food industry as a preserve) please note that Sodium Benzoate is acts as a preservative under a pH of 5. You can add it at 0.1% (you’ll need to challenge test your formula) - if you want to obtain viscosity, you can look at Xanthum gum, Natrosol or carbomers to build viscosity, Xanthum gum is also used in the food industry. NS if you want to also look at the addition of enzymes (see Novazymes).
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Please see attached documentation on the Imbentin AG/124S/070.
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Hello Leon. Do you think we can maybe come to some terms for you to formulate the concentrate for this soap that we can just mix the ingredients based on percentage to create the concentrate that we can then mix with water to make the final product? I can supply you with the original product it was based off of to reverse engineer and you can potentially improve on that original product where you see fit. The main objective is to have a foaming dish soap that’s made of plant based ingredients or at least as much as possible, be soy-free, paraben-free, vegan, leave no soap smell/aroma or chemical residue behind after washing. Think a formula safe enough for baby dishes, bottles and utensils where the consumer is very niche and buying for the specific reasons mentioned above.
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I’m so sorry to hijack this post but I cannot for the life of me find how to post a question in a forum! (Technophobe that I am!) Could someone please point me in the right direction?!
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@Wren333 Click on one off the three Topic areas at the top of the page (General, Formulating, Cosmetic Industry) and then you should see a button for New Discussion.
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What’s pH?
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pH is the measure of alkalinity and acidity of a lets say a liquid - low pH indicated acidity and high pH indicates alkalinity - pH is measured from 0 (acid) to 14 (alkali) and pH neutral is 7. Human skin pH is at about 5 - so when you formulate cosmetics it is something to be aware of.
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I was asking for the pH of the product and the question was directed at the OP. Please let them answer.
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If we are talking biodegradable, I’ve gone one step further. We manufactured a liquid dishwashing soap by saponifying waste cooking oil. Yep, turned a waste product into something that cleaned dishes!!!
This product of ours sold very well globally.
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This is brilliant!
Did you consider formulating in PVOH film - in that way you can move away from plastic and place your already very eco-friendly product into a film that dissolves in water - like a laundry pod.
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There are shipping issues when using non-rigid containers. Remember, we were shipping globally and the last issue we want is with containers leaking/breaking. We tried many options.
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Mike - is the from “yellow grease”?
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Not only using food waste to make different types of cleaning stuff is actually not New, but it’s funny that guys from the natural realm complain about (very safe) parabens, but don’t mind having very toxic aromatic compounds from cooking oil waste in their soaps ????
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We explored the use of used cooking oil (“yellow grease”) for soap production and abandoned the idea based on lack of assurance of chemical quality. We were working with a well know global fast food chain. Cost was the objective. Many batches were ok, but the frequency batches with chemical quality issues made this an unreliable source.
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No, it’s not new. We started producing about 20 years ago.
Perhaps you could elaborate on your statement “but don’t mind having very toxic aromatic compounds from cooking oil waste in their soap.”
And when you say soap, we only ever produced a cleaning liquid, which was a soap, but never a soap for cleansing the body.
And an important part of the process was our sourcing of the used oil. We only used from one reliable source that we thoroughly vetted. And then initially, samples were tested for any toxins.
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Mike, our effort for hand soap required analytical qualification of every lot and those results indicated lack of quality control despite supplier’s assurances. The primary driver then was cost - as most folks learn, quality is costly. Think one would need to validate supplier’s “process” as with any primary ingredient.
I’d not get carried away with “biodegradability” beyond the ingredient that appeals to a lot of consumers’ perceptions of natural vulnerability in this context. Appreciate that the product has found a niche in this regard.
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Yes, I think every context produces different demands on the product production and marketing/selling. In our case quality was paramount, and we were lucky here in the source of our recycled cooking oil.
Additionally, we outsourced the production of our household cleaning liquid to a group of intellectually disabled. I learnt that these people were very good at doing these types of repetitive tasks involved in liquid soap making. Therefore, in addition to producing a cleaning liquid made from recycled cooking oil, we were also able to have this group of intellectually disabled earn themselves an income.
And it became quite a good income stream for them. We marketed and sold the finished product, passing the income we paid them for our wholesale purchase.
We then encouraged them to sell the finished product under their brand, which further increased their income.
So, multiple agendas from our side, with the prime one being to provide an income for this group of intellectually disabled. And this group then went on to capacity-build others to do the same.
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That’s very nice, Mike
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By not new, I mean a bit earlier in time. I actually found a patent from 1993 with the same technology (https://patents.google.com/patent/KR950005976A/en). I even found a magazine called “Vegetarian Times” where in the 1985 issue, they mentioned that some soap makers used leftover restaurant cooking oil for making soap (https://books.google.com.pe/books?id=ZQgAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30&dq=soap+from+cooking+oil&hl=es&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjsrLCM1vaCAxVrGLkGHWyeBIE4ChDoAXoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q=soap%20from%20cooking%20oil&f=false). And if we go back in time even further, there’s a 1943 book called The Belgian Chemical Industry where in Germany and due to WWII, there was a shortage of fats so they made soap only using waste oil (https://www.google.com.pe/books/edition/The_Belgian_Chemical_Industry/4SJNRXLSg78C?hl=es&gbpv=1&dq=soap+from+waste+oil&pg=PA9&printsec=frontcover).
@PhilGeis mentioned the quality issue of the reused oil, and that’s where it get complicated, since temperature, time, type of oil (soy, canola, etc.) can for different levels of byproducts. The most concerning group are the polyclyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-021-14755-z). The risk of exposure to these compounds by washing with a soap containing PAH’s is of course very low, but is as low as the exposure to parabens in similar conditions, so these products would fit into a circular economy scheme well (although, a different story is the release of these compounds from a soap, to the waters). My point was that these compounds have a less safe safety profile compared to parabens, for instance, to it’s weird to run away from some (parabens) but neglect the others in the “green” arena.
patents.google.com
KR950005976A - 폐유를 이용한 비누의 제조방법 - Google Patents
KR950005976A - 폐유를 이용한 비누의 제조방법 - Google Patents
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Thanks for your very informative post, it is much appreciated. And yes indeed, using recycled oil to make soap has been around for a while. Again, I emphasise that our approach was a liquid for cleaning purposes only, not for body cleansing.
Yes, agreed, the quality of the re-used oil is very important. We were lucky here with the type of oil (palm oil) and the source. And at the time we had access to our in-house labs and we used external labs to do thorough testing.
And of not sure of the validity of where you draw parallels with parabens when talking about safety. Our approach was to thoroughly test our eco-friendly household cleaning liquid for safety and not draw any parallels. The safety of our cleaner was our prime focus.
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Mike - testing for safety. How was that done and how does your oil supplier maintain their quality. That was our concern. Despite assurances, RM quality control found a cigarette butt in one batch. That with occasional chemical excursion killed it. btw - what is the color of your material?
Reference to “fluid” rather than soap. Is that marketing - did you find consumer perception negative to “soap” in this context?
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The testing for safety, both incoming oil and cleaning liquid, was done in our two in-house laboratories (microbiology and physical chem lab) that were part of our GMP certification and therefore subject to frequent inspections by government officials as part of the continuing GMP Certification.
In addition, we sent samples to exterior-certified labs.
The colour of the incoming recycled cooking oil was a cloudy brown colour. This was strictly monitored by our QC Manager. And we never had any recycled cooking oil rejected on colour. Having said that, I have seen other recycled cooking oil that was black.
Regarding your comment:
“Reference to “fluid” rather than soap. Is that marketing - did you find consumer perception negative to “soap” in this context?”
Nothing to do with marking. We described the product as it was: Eco Friendly General Cleaning Liquid.
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Thanks Mike - what safety parameters do you guys address?
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Honestly, it has been some years and I don’t remember. We started all of this in 2006. Once set up and the parameters determined, it was managed by our QC Manager. Our company has now closed.
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Thanks Mike
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