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spirulina
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Thanks Bob. Interesting device. It will have to wait until after the critical CO2 machine though…
It seems I have been worrying needlessly. Now, the speckly appearance of the shampoo has gone; there is no separation visible, and the shampoo looks amazing, like metallic military olive colour. Viscosity is excellent. Using sage and lavender essential oils to complement the existing aroma worked great.
So, it’s just a question of patience. This is a shampoo with a two day production process.
At the same time I am nearly finished with my aqueous extraction of frozen spirulina. The filtrate is not green or even dark green; it is dark blue. I’ll hazard a guess that the freezing and blending and filtering has removed most of the green chloroplasts and left the anthocyanin. Comments welcome; I feel like I am pushing the envelope of my understanding here, I’m not a biologist. -
Interesting, there’s a lot of buzz going on with Spirulina. Have you looked into Chlorophyll possibly?
From a marketing stand point, I’ve had bad experience with clearly displaying these type of ingredients. It’s a good idea to do something similar to whole blends approach “herbal blend - consists of so and so” fancy blend name is bonus points
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There is a problem, which is that it’s only really suitable for small batch production. It is unstable on three fronts: 1) pH is best at 5.5-6 (no problem there) 2) light (a pearl and an opaque bottle can fix that) 3) temperature - this IS a problem. Probably the effective shelf life of the active ingredient is 2 months.
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Hi @Belassi have u had any luck with this shampoo you are talking about? After doing a lot of research about natural colorants for shampoo, i came up with spirulina powder but I need someones input who has worked with it before? I have been advised by one of the formulators i know through a friend that it can be used from 0.5% to 1% in the formulations by mixing the powder in some warm water first. Im concerned that if I use it, will it destabilize the whole formulation when made in big batches? Will the color stay the same throughout? What are your thoughts/experiences?
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Just to add, i have organic green spirulina powder , bought just from one of the superfood powdesuppliers in uk- i cant find a cosmetic spirulina powder extract frm any of the uk suppliers-
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@Sal there’s a supplier in the UK: https://www.thesoapkitchen.co.uk/spirulina-algae-powder . Not sure how much you need, they do DIY and small business sizes but they are very responsive, so maybe it’s worth reaching out to them. They have a lot of interesting natural ingredients. Prices are the lowest in the UK (for DIY websites)
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Well. What to say … the good, is that this gives great sensorials and seems to be completely no-tears, also the colour is cute. The bad, is that it is very unstable. The colour changes day by day from blue-green to green. In about two weeks you end up with a shampoo that contains nothing but degraded algae. This would be a fab ingredient if only it could be stabilised. Have you noticed there are no spirulina shampoos on the market?
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@Belassi, I think everyone who comes to formulation has an idea to create something new or at least to use some exotic oils/extracts. After some time the realisation comes, that if something doesn’t exist in commercial products already, there is a good reason for that. I have a rule now, everytime I find some exotic ingredient, I go to beautipedia.com and type the inci name in the search. It shows popular products with this ingredient (and ingredient list). If it doesn’t exist, I think twice before purchasing.
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@Belassi I grew my own spirulina at home for about 2 years and would say that it doesn’t smell if it is stored properly. But, if there is some moisture in your spirulina powder + improper temperature it starts smell like hell due to high proteins (57%). I am sure that you purchased spoiled batch of spirulina ( a lot of sp.comes from China without any quality control). I also met in shops spirulina from Asia with extracted phycocianine (water soluble pigment-proteine complex), of course without any notification about such treatment.
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My spirulina was (and remains) perfectly OK in its packet. It is dry and at 4C. It’s only in aqueous solution that it breaks down.
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It occurs to me that I might be able to overcome the instability problem of spirulina by using it in a shampoo BAR instead of liquid shampoo.
However, it seems unlikely I will be able to do this; the problem being, availability of solid surfactants. The only one that C. Lar seems to stock is SLS, and I detest SLS for its lousy sensorials (horribly short-flow) and poor flash-foam and irritancy. I’ll investigate but I really doubt it.
Would anyone like to suggest some solid surfactants (not SLS nor SLES) that are among the less obscure ones? I guess I can include cocamide MEA in a recipe. -
Rather suprised to find a place selling SCS. However, it seems quite expensive at $20 / kg.
Price for SLSA is worse: $50 / kg. in 10Kg tubs.
Can’t imagine the finished cost of a bar at those prices! -
@Belassi, do you have access to Sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate powder? The best surfactants for shampoo bars are: SLSa, Olefin Sulfonate and SCI. Combinatino of SLSa, SCI and CAPB doesn’t need pH adjustment. I haven’t tried SCS, but I read it’s quite alkaline and it’s not easy to reduce the pH when working with it (in a shampoo bar).
Regarding SLS, the majority of Lush’s shampoo bars are made of SLS. I personally don’t like them, but they are very popular:
https://uk.lush.com/products/shampoo/godiva -
I don’t understand why people love lush so much. All of their shampoo bars are made with SLS and draggy stearic acid. Their favorite emulsifier for lotions is TEA stearate, which means that the lowest pH they could have is 8.
All about the presentation… So, try to make it with SLS, add spirulina and market it as an eco-friendly product. -
@Belassi I just made a serum with 0.4% Spirulina powder and it is very stable. I masked the odour with Rose bulgarian in Jojoba, its a pale green and I am loving it!
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If you need to reduce particle size, use a coffee grinder. If you are only using small amounts.
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It might be stable now, but see how long it lasts.
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It did go through 5 cycles of freeze/thaw/heat? do you still think the stability will still change?
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It may be stable in that respect, but I am pretty sure you will see a colour and consistency change within a week or two. I believe the proteins break down once in water.
I still don’t understand why those solid surfactants are sooooo expensive. I checked prices in the US as well and still way too pricey. -
I hope not. So far so good but I do feel the fragrance is not as strong!
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