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surfactant system turns hazy after salt addition
I’ve got this good shower gel base that I always work with, I almost never have issues, only sometimes I have to add solubilizer for my fragrance and vary the amount of salt to thicken it (usually 0-0.50% max.) My base is basically SLES, CAPB, Cocamide MEA and Lauryl Glucoside.My issue is that 2 months ago, I made this clear shower gel and was able to thicken it out with salt @0.35%.Now that I’m trying to reproduce the exact same formula , my shower gel starts getting hazy as I add salt. At 0.20% I have a clear gel, at 0.25% i get a semi hazy gel and at 0.30% I get an almost opaque gel. I actually need to use 0.35% to get the same viscosity I was getting back then.Could this be a raw material issue? I’m thinking that lot# of SLES I’m now using is different from the one I used 2 months ago-maybe different amount of NaCl content? -
5 Replies
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Check the salt content of CAPB, maybe it has more salt than before and hence you need to cut off @ 0.2%
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I think this proble has to do with the quality of your SLES.
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The problem could be in your SLES as well, take a small sample of the previous lot (if you have preserved a small sample from it) and repeat the same process. If you are able to replicate the previous quality then your SLES is the culprit.
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After doing some experiments, it was CAPB the one to blame. I used several samples I kept from previous lots and my shower gel came clear and viscous. The CoA’s all look the same though….I wouldn’t have known it could cause an issue by just reading at the specifications like % salt, etc.
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If this lot# of CAPB had more salt than the previous ones, shouldn’t I’ve had to add less salt than before? What happened was the opposite, I had to add much more salt to get the viscosity I wanted. What could’ve been the real cause of haziness and low viscosity?
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