Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating Solid anhydrous formulations with fatty alcohols

  • Solid anhydrous formulations with fatty alcohols

    Posted by tecnico3vinia on July 27, 2022 at 2:09 pm

    Hi there!

    Most of anhydrous solid products that I know (e.g. lip balms, solid sticks) use certain types of ingredientes as the thickeners to solidify the formulations. The most common ones that I noticed are beeswax, carnauba wax, candelilla wax, microcristaline wax, ozokerite etc. I was wondering why cetyl alcohol/cetearyl alcohol aren’t used in these types of formulations. They’re significantly cheap and readily available thickening agents… They don’t work out right solidfying anhydrous solid products? Has anyone ever tried it?

    Just asking out of curiosity!

    Kind regards, 

    Valentyna replied 6 days, 8 hours ago 4 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Syl

    Member
    July 27, 2022 at 5:59 pm

    I use some cetyl alcohol in my lip balm for slip, but I do not believe that it can replace wax as the main thickening ingredient.

  • michaelpolymer

    Member
    July 28, 2022 at 11:47 am

    probably cetyl alcohol doesnot has the oil binding ability. By the way , do you know the difference between microcristaline wax and ozokerite wax? Tks!

  • tecnico3vinia

    Member
    July 28, 2022 at 12:34 pm

    Syl said:

    I use some cetyl alcohol in my lip balm for slip, but I do not believe that it can replace wax as the main thickening ingredient.

    I also don’t think it can replace the waxes and the maisn thickening agent. I have a client that want to use it as the sole thickening ingredient and it’s doing some tests, but I actually never tested it. 

  • tecnico3vinia

    Member
    July 28, 2022 at 12:35 pm

    probably cetyl alcohol doesnot has the oil binding ability. By the way , do you know the difference between microcristaline wax and ozokerite wax? Tks!

    Thank you, Michael!

    I unfortunately don’t know the difference between microcristaline wax and ozokerite since I don’t use it in my formulations. 

  • Valentyna

    Member
    March 22, 2024 at 11:44 pm

    Im also very interested in this topic. I used behenyl alcohol in my balm. What happened a few months after use and temperature changes is that some behenyl alcohol started going back to white pallets the original state. Have you seen it happen to your balm? Is there a way to prevent it?

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