-
Preservative for nonionic surfactant shampoo
-
You are welcome dear.
I did not fully understand your question. Are you referring to DMDM Hydantoin?
Short answer is…I DONT KNOW! I honestly do not know because it appears that you kind of insist on eco friendly, green, organic, natural, following EWG standards. I have zero trust in eco preservative. EWG is mighty rubbish. At the same time I understand that you have demand to comply, I assume you are doing a business.
Long answer is….Gosh I am going to tell a story!
About Propanediol….when I started making my own moisturiser I was stupidly sold by claims. I believed Propanediol was ‘THE BEST’ non-sticky humectact, superior to Glycerol, natural preservative, so on and so forth just because DuPont and Tate & Lyle says is true, they also showed me expensively printed brochure of theirs. Of course, only to find out that it is just a claim. However, it works as a preservative only if it is used at high concentration, so high that it may not be practical nor skin-friendly in your product. Same reason why most glycols, most polyols, most sugars do not really need preservative because they are self-preserved if undiluted.
High amount of Propanediol is needed due to what is called “water activity”. @Pharma explained long and broad on this in one of my long-winded comments. LOL! The link is here. I do not truly understand how it works other than it works by hydrogen bonding, but I know that it must be used at an impractical amount to be useful. I think it needs to be saturated enough in order to hydrogen bond with each free water molecule to decrease water activity. The more the merrier.
Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) is real!
Abdullah said:We also try to use one preservative system with high pH range to be able to use it in all our products in pH range 4-7I am confused about this part. High pH range? pH between 4 and 7 is not high! But I can understand it is high if comparing pH 4-7 with pH 1-3.
I am not sure if shampoo works well at pH 4. Personally, it didn’t work well for me. Due to my curiosity and ignorance, I made a sample of shampoo/wash of pH 2, 3, 4, 5. The lower pH it goes the worse the wash becomes, foam starts vanishing, detergency is slowly culled….just some weird slippery slimy something. I thought I was sleeping
According to what I read, ‘low’ pH tends to turn surfactants back to their acid (or fatty acid) form rendering them useless as surfactants/emulsifiers. I am very sure it is explained by @Pharma (You really seriously need to stalk on what he shares on this whole site. He is insanely technical and detailed, and willing to share extra data even if I/we never ask for. Pretty silly if we didn’t abuse his knowledge! LMAO! ).
I checked for Caprylhydroxamic Acid. Looks like it is a chelator like most organic acids are, including EDTA. From what I understood, those things work by binding ions so that yucky stuff won’t grow. This is often insufficient which is the reason why dedicated preservative is still needed, unfortunately. You can still grow microbes with deionised water or the most immaculate and the holiest water in all multiverses as long there is carbon and nitrogen (e.g., glucose) as energy source and for cell proliferation.
Similar to those substances (glycol, polyol, sugar, etc) mentioned earlier, if chelator works then it must exist in the system at high enough amount to work well as preservative, and this high amount is also impractical. pH would be very low and I am more than sure that you already know that low pH can be part of preservation. I can be wrong about this because there are always acids which are not acid even if the name is acid, just as Cetyl Alcohol is far from being the volatile type of alcohol which the entire world is most familiar with.
Sales people and advertisement always say ‘low usage’ and hopefully make people go WOW ECONOMY! THE CHEAPEST AND THE BEST! I BUY NOW!
My humble ‘advice’ is use formaldehyde-donor preservatives for all things if you/your customers are not organic natural snowflakes. My personal choice is DMDM Hydantoin because this one seems to be as pure as it is without other things mixed in other than water. DMDM Hydantoin is much cheaper than other forms of formaldehyde-donors perhaps they are a mixture or branded such as Germall Plus and Germaben II.
DMDM Hydantoin, in my experience, is a very very broad spectrum microbiocidal/microbiostatic agent. It is compatible with most substances. Cationic, anionic, nonionic, whatever pH (but with weak acid and base) and any temperatures (but not extremes; not beyond boiling water temperature and not let it boil for too long).
Just make sure that your product has no high organic load. I don’t understand why there are still people putting petals, milk, oat in their products and wonder why colourful fuzzy things grow. I doubt they are serious in staying safe and healthy. To say whatever they are doing is dangerous is an understatement. To preserve high organic load they will need good ole Formalin (true raw form of Formaldehyde. Freddy Kruger of cosmetics).
Formaldehyde-donors are usually used at maximum 0.5% or 0.6%. You can always mix in other types of preservatives (No. Not Propanediol. Not “organic/natural” ones like Grape Seed Extract, essential oils). The funny thing is if you mix a little of all preservatives, you can use far less of each preservative, thus it is possible that the finished product causes far less irritation or allergic reaction to snowflakes who possess snowflake skin. Sadly, I do not think anybody can tell you exactly how much ‘total preservative’ if it is in a mixture. Use enough of everything, you will get loads, more than enough preservation. “Enough” is subjective, but generally this is a number game if you want to mix preservatives.
With that said and no matter what I or we suggest and share, at the end of the day, you are playing with people’s life (your products are being or will be used by others whether you work for/under somebody or you are your own boss) you might want to seriously go for PET or Preservative Efficacy Test like @ngarayeva001 mentioned.
I will say humorously, from what I understood, @ngarayeva001
and I are considered hobbyists so we can f*ck our own body and we are the ones responsible for our own stupidity, we can only sue ourselves! Hahahah! -
The most difficult thing in doing this as a hobby is that we have to deal with repackagers. The ingredient I can get wasn’t stored the same way it was for a manufacturer and that 25kg drum of an emulsifier was decanted thousand times to smaller bottles. Open and close, let air in, let dust in, let bacteria in. So DIY ingredients are compromised from day 1. I see commercial products preserved with PE9010 and they do last. There’s no way PE9010 will keep my product safe for 2 years. I had it failed visibly twice (how many times it failed and I didn’t notice?). Same with other even serious preservatives like germall. Don’t want to discourage anyone but even formaldehyde releasers aren’t a guarantee. Add EDTA, add glycols, add the maximum amount of preservative (and potentially even combine several blends), don’t add bug food and have reasonable expectations about shelf like. When I gift what I make I say ‘use within 3 months’. It’s quite upsetting for me because I am a ‘synthetic’ formulator and my formulas would last for much longer if they were made under proper conditions but I have to be real. So @Cst4Ms4Tmps4, maybe don’t rely on DMDM alone.
-
@ngarayeva001
I do agree with you. I buy all my things from people who sell things in small quantities. But I have no problem relying only DMDM Hydantoin alone. As mentioned, I have reasonable amount of Urea and other stuff that act as ‘co-preservatives’ like co-emulsifier enhancing the main preservative.DMDM Hydantoin alone, it works. I make things for myself so I am using them often and I monitor them daily as they are actually sitting right beside my laptop!
Even if I do not see what is growing, I have fail-safe built-in to know in the unlikely event that preservation fails.
In addition to that, I am a minimalist, this makes preservation even less of an issue!
Unfortunately, formaldehyde-releaser and Parabens seem to be the “best” preservatives. The world has been using either of them exclusively and proven safe time and again, so why suddenly the blend and worries of preservatives exist is beyond me. Of course I already know the answer to it. Thanks to scaremongers.
I, for one, am not bothered by “blends”. They make no sense to me financially and logically.
Understandably not all preservatives are perfect, however in a blend the imperfection is multiplied because only part of the blend works/compatible with certain ingredients while the other part is inactivated by certain ingredients. Depending on the blend, it may fail entirely. Money wasted.
I am not rich enough to pay for things only to be inactivated and I am very sure I have things that inactivate some preservatives. Some blends are with ‘acids’, one of them is Glucono delta Lactone+Sodium Benzoate (Geogard Ultra by Lonza). As you can see, the blend works well only at low pH. Not possible for me. Yes, I am speaking for myself and myself only. I need to keep my medium about pH 6.2 as I have Urea.
I do not want more acid than I need due to incompatibility issue again, or end up “too much” salt in my formulation destabilising the system (thickener, thickening). The concentration used as preservative may be too little to me but too much to some thickeners, I am more than sure you are aware of this issue. And due to the complexity of a formulation, the effect could be amplified or nullified.
Blends are for the sake of convenience and for people who want to arrive destination without worrying much. Problem is they rely too much on blend that they do not know how to troubleshoot and do not know what is going on. Then they buy new blend, only to find out it fails. Buy new one, buy until they get it right, rinse and repeat. Viscous cycle. It is playing with money blindly.
Even if I can manually make my own blend of preservatives, my reason remains the same. Pointless to add things that I know that won’t work or not needed.
I hope I made sense.
I am a ‘synthetic’ person as well. I have no issue like you might be experiencing.
It’s quite upsetting for me because I am a ‘synthetic’ formulator and my formulas would last for much longer if they were made under proper conditions but I have to be real.What are you comparing to? Last for much longer than….what?
Generally speaking, synthetic is it is way more stable and way purer than organic/right from a tree. Much easier to formulate too. This applies to perfumery. I like to think synthetic is inherently clean, inexpensive, makes life easy, cost-effective.
So, given the same constants, organic one spoils quicker than synthetic one.Note: The constants here is a product made under the same improper conditions. And use the same raw ingredients that are open and close, let air in, let dust in, let bacteria in at the resellers or repackagers.
Depending on the nature of synthetic and organic, I have acid, base, polysorbate, glycol, polyol, silicone, organic, inorganic, etc, etc. All are still fine long past their best before use date or expiry date. Some have been sitting there for 7 years and still fresh and strong! Citric Acid, Glyceryol, etc may be organic but they are at their very high concentration so they are self-preserving.
Polysorbate and Silicone don’t need additive/preservative as they are inherently long life and can be kept indefinitely. I think Glycerol, Sorbitol, and Propylene Glycol can also be kept indefinitely. It is said that they all will eventually degrade to their fundamental forms, they are treating my friends and I very well so far. No complaint about skin reaction, bad smell, bad taste.
-
The main problem is that you don’t even know if it failed or not because they fail on bacteria much earlier than on mold but you can’t see it. You don’t always see colonies of mold when product is actually severely contaminated.
-
Thank you all from your informative comments.
Can i use Piroctone Olamine as only preservative in Shampoo with %15 active surfactant decyl glucoside?
In attached photo you can see it has broad spectrum activity and MIC is %0.05 or less.
At what percentage can i use it as only preservative for Shampoo?
Log in to reply.