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Surfactant flow sensorials
My usual body shampoo is a simple combination of Plantaren APB (Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate (and) Ammonium Laureth Sulfate (and) Lauramide DEA (and) Lauryl Glucoside (and) Ammonium Xylenesulfonate) and CAPB. Apart from EDTA, water, preservative and fragrance, that’s it. And it performs really well; I only need 30% surfactants to get a really thick, high foaming body wash and it has excellent sensorials (long flow).
I have a stock of SLES that I bought when I was still experimenting with SLS/SLES so I decided to use it up making some body shampoo.
Try as I might, the result is markedly inferior to using the APB blend.
I tried this formula from AkzoNobel:
water 60%
SLES 30%
CAPB 8%
preservatives etc 2%. I used a higher quality thickener (Glucamate VLT) than the suggested acrylates copolymer.
Result was poor. (a) Much less foam than the ammonium blend. (b) poor sensorials (short flow, draggy). Even after adjusting it by adding even more surfactant - an additional 8% sodium cocoamphoacetate - now totalling 46% surfactant - the foam was still (though much better) not as good as the APB and the sensorials were still unpleasant compared to the APB.
I even tried adding 2% cocamide MEA but this didn’t give a big improvement.
- so what’s going on here? Ammonium surfactants so very much better than sodium? -
4 Replies
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Where is SLS in your change as I only see sles which won’t cut it.cation i.e. Na or NH4 should not make that much difference?
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So you think I should include SLS? Why? Foam profile?
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Most definitely.
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The two mixtures outlined are so different in make up that a reasoned comparion is impossible.
If you want to make anything similar to your own formula you should at least use similar materials, as Dr Bob says, substituting sodium based surfactants for the ammonium based.
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