Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating Shower Gel thinning out

  • Shower Gel thinning out

    Posted by Cherma on January 31, 2024 at 2:32 am

    Hi, I sell an unfragranced shower gel to my customer. The customer adds the fragrance but the product is thinning out.

    Currently thicken with salt.

    How can I prevent above?

    Cherma replied 9 months, 1 week ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • LeonB

    Member
    February 1, 2024 at 12:19 am

    Hi Cherma,

    Try this, I take it that your base is probably SLES based, you are adding a fragrance oil to water – the fragrance oil needs to be premixed with a surfactant, then add the blend to your base formula. Why don’t you get a sample of the fragrance oil from your client, then try to do as above? You can premix the fragrance with let’s say 0.2% Tween 20 and 0.5% CDE with about 0.5% Fragrance oil and add this to your base formulation.

  • Cherma

    Member
    February 2, 2024 at 4:41 am

    Thanks, will try out and advise

  • chemicalmatt

    Member
    February 2, 2024 at 9:21 am

    @Cherma The problem you describe is viscosity crash, not fragrance incompatibility. Premixing your fragrance will not resolve this. Your customer may be overwhelming the spatial stability with too much fragrance or uses one with a lot of phenoxyethanol or ethylhexylglycerin as fixatives, both which will crash viscosity if salt is the only builder. For this application you need to maintain viscosity with a polymer or gum resin rheology stabilizer. Acrylates copolymer, hydroxymethylcellulose, another cellulosic, the overused xanthan gum - even better a combination of one or more. This will allow your customer to add any fragrance at nearly any concentration without viscosity crash.

  • Cherma

    Member
    February 5, 2024 at 1:48 am

    Noted, thanks

  • Cherma

    Member
    February 5, 2024 at 5:23 am

    I have made a sample with guar gum and salt. Thickens really well.

    Hope this will work out

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