Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating Solubilizer

  • Solubilizer

    Posted by marek.barnas on August 11, 2021 at 11:23 am

    Hi
    I have below essential oil blends
    1. NEROLI+CHAMOMILE: 45% lavender, 27.3% cedarwood, 18.2% neroli, 4.5% lemongrass, 4.5% chamomile
    2. LAVENDER+PATCHOULI: 42.8% lavender, 28.6% cedarwood, 14.7% patchouli, 14.7% bergamot
    3. BERGAMOT+WILD FLOWERS: 43.3% lavender, 48.2% bergamot, 8.4% jasmine
    which I want to use in Room Spray @ 2%
    I tried to solubilize them using Polysorbate20, PEG-40, Propylene Glycol but none of them seems to be working. Products become whitish/white after 24hrs.
    Other ingredients in product: Deionised Water, Preservative (Sodium Benzoate, Potassium Sorbate), Augeo

    My question is: what other solubilizer I could use?

    Thank youi

    Abdullah replied 3 years, 2 months ago 6 Members · 10 Replies
  • 10 Replies
  • gordof

    Member
    August 11, 2021 at 11:33 am

    hi 

    The described PEG should normally work quite well with that essential oil Combinations. 

    The first question would be how much solubilizer did you trie of the ones you have used already? 

    Concentration is a big part of solubilization. I would estimate around 1 - 4 % of Solubilizer depending on the Essential oil Combination.

    Second, how did you incorporate the Essential oils in the Product? just added all ingredients and Stierd or did you follow another path. 

    For Solubilisation, it is very important sometimes to pre-solubilize the Essential oil within the Solubilizer without any water and then add it to the rest of the Formulation. 

    hope that helps a little if you can give some more information about the used levels of the solubilizer and how you incorporated it in the Formulation that can give some more hint and help. 

    Tobias 

  • marek.barnas

    Member
    August 11, 2021 at 11:42 am

    Hi
    I have premixed essential oils with solubilizers and then added to the water. At the beginning product was clear however it became whitish/white after 24hrs
    At the beginning I have tried 3:1 (solubilizer:oil) and then I also tried 5:1 and even 10:1. 
    Hope this helps

  • marek.barnas

    Member
    August 11, 2021 at 11:43 am

    Each blend is being used @ 2% so I tried to use 3 times more solubilizer, 5 times more and 10 times more. Same results with products being whitish

  • ketchito

    Member
    August 11, 2021 at 12:41 pm

    @”marek.barnas” Did you try mixing the solubilizers? There are few blends from big suppliers, that are actually a mixture of PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil and a Polysorbate (some even add Laureth-9 to the combo). The key is to find the righ proportion of solubilizers. 

  • marek.barnas

    Member
    August 11, 2021 at 12:52 pm

    I only tried to mix PEG-40 with Poly20 and product became thick

  • ozgirl

    Member
    August 12, 2021 at 1:16 am
    Can you add any ethanol to the room spray? This often helps. I use around 10%.
    If possible try reducing your essential oil blends to 1%. They should still give a great fragrance at this level.
  • marek.barnas

    Member
    August 12, 2021 at 7:07 am

    ozgirl said:

    Can you add any ethanol to the room spray? This often helps. I use around 10%.
    If possible try reducing your essential oil blends to 1%. They should still give a great fragrance at this level.

    Will adding 10% ethanol make my product flammable and do I need to include flammable pictogram in packaging and CLP?

  • gordof

    Member
    August 12, 2021 at 8:28 am

    hi
    10 % ethanol will not make your product flammable.

    I think it takes around 40 % to be flammable but that depends a little on the region you want to sell it and the regulations they have there but with 10 % you should be fine in that regard.

  • chemicalmatt

    Member
    August 13, 2021 at 6:27 pm

    That is one tall order there @”marek.barnas”. Those are difficult terpene-rich oils to solubilize and you are attempting to use a lot of them. PolySugaMulse D9 from Colonial Chemical is the best oil solubilizer kg/kg I know. Blend with Polyglyceryl-4 Caprate if needed and you should have something workable at a ratio of 4:1 to essential oils. 

  • Abdullah

    Member
    August 15, 2021 at 4:15 am

    Polyglyceryl 10 Caprylate is also a good one

Log in to reply.

Chemists Corner