The Players

• 

  David08848

  Member

  August 12, 2015 at 8:19 pm

  Sorry, Thanks!
  David

• 

  AuroraBorealis

  Member

  August 13, 2015 at 1:35 pm

  Ok so I see that you’ve done your research here but do you have experience formulating with these at all? I’m asking because all of these are theoretically correct but when you put them together, more often than not you will notice stability issues or suspension issues. For instance, SCI and Iselux are a pain to formulate together (at least for me! Follow the manufacturers how-tos). 

  
  

  Anyhow, the point I want to make is that don’t do this: 

  
  

  “

  I was thinking something along the lines of Sodium Lauroyl
  Methyl Isethionate as a primary, CAPB or Sodium Cocoamphoacetate as a secondary
  with Sodium Methyl Oleoyl Taurate in a small quantity for skin feel and a
  little Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate for lather for the body wash. 
  

  “

  Pick two, and balance the rest with water. Test it to see how it works in terms of lather, skin feel and thickness. You’ll be surprised with the results. 

  
  

  Now I’m a generation SLS. I grew up needing to feeling squeaky clean after wash or it wasn’t adequate! What you proposed up there (keep in mind I have never tried it and this next bit is just a guess based on experience) to a generation SLS like me might feel like washing with glycerin. Sticky, heavy with a nice afterfeel… but not adequate.

  
  

  For the foaming and bubble bath purposes, I always keep CAPB betaine in. The rest don’t have the foam profile usually associated with bubble bath.  They foam and bubble but not in the same way.

  
  

  Just my 2 cents!
• 

  OldPerry

  Member

  August 13, 2015 at 3:03 pm

  Great points! 

  You’ve got to narrow down your choices and start with as few ingredients as possible.  Then you can build on your prototypes based on things that the initial ingredients are lacking. VO5 shampoo made a lot of money selling a simple SLS / Betaine formula.

  I would say start with 1 surfactant and see how it feels. Then add another.

  Also, be sure to blind your testing. If you really want to end up with the best result you have to reject your hunches and feelings. Only through blind testing can you get this.
• 

  David08848

  Member

  August 13, 2015 at 5:44 pm

  Aurora,

  I always appreciate it when someone take the time to answer at length!  Thank you!.  I tend to do a great deal of research before I tackle something.  When I began soapmaking in 2000 I ended up doing research for a year before I tried anything.  As a result I developed a method of formulating which I use to this day and my first batch of soap was perfect.  It was the same for my shaving cream which I introduced this past Summer.  What is interesting is that I followed some of the same techniques that Perry mentions in his last three videos i.e. looking for similar formulations to start with, researching current products online to get ingredients lists, going to the US and other patent sites from all over the world as well as checking out cosmetic chemisty formulations in books, online, from chemical companies and the like.  Perry’s last three videos have been helpful in this process!  I have found some formulations, surfactant blends and recommendations for ingredient “positioning” in a formula from these places and answers to some of my posts here have been helpful in making sure I don’t head down the wrong path with a surfactant that doesn’t deliver what I need.  The other thing that became more obvious from your post is that I need to think of Body Wash and Bubble Bath as two separate projects even though I am hoping they will have surfactants in common for ease of formulating as well as from an investment standpoint!  The less pails (and upcharges!) I have to pay for, the better!  (the point that some of these surfactants may not produce the type of foam/lather needed is well taken which is another reason for the bubble bath to take a back seat for the moment!  Thanks!)

  As far a formulating with the isethionates and taurates, they both come in various forms from hard prills and little chunks to pastes, powders and viscous liquids!  Collecting, cataloging as well as reviewing and understanding all the information has been overwhelming but your suggestion to start with a couple then add others as needed makes sense in that aspect so I will give it a try!  As far as the skin-feel aspect of a product, I also grew up in a time (from the late 50’s, throughout the 1960s) when being and feeling  “clean” was foremost, so I can identify with that!  The hardest part of this project for me is that I don’t use body wash!  That will make it a bit more difficult for me but I’ll do my best!

  Perry, as far as your suggestion to “blind test”, I’ve looked it up online but not here yet so if there are any posts that go into it in more detail let me know!  There are articles on formulation here on this site and even on formulating body washes that I have read and kept for reference as well as on other Cosmetic site which have been very beneficial!  Now if we could only get you to teach separate formulating courses including one on surfactants then I would be in better shape!

  What is positive so far is that at least on paper the ingredients I am concentrating on seem to be ones that will so together so that helps and it means I am headed in a positive direction!  Thanks for listening, thinking and sharing!

  David
  Stone Cottage Soapworks Inc.

• 

  OldPerry

  Member

  August 13, 2015 at 9:07 pm

  Here is an example of a blinded test.

  https://chemistscorner.com/cosmetic-formula-testing-triangle-test/

  
  

  Essentially, you create two formulas and three samples.  One sample is the odd one out while the other two are exactly the same.  You set up a code for each sample so you don’t know which is which while you test.  Then you try to pick the two samples that are the same.

  
  

  If you can’t pick the odd one out of the three then you probably don’t have a significant difference.  If you can pick the odd one out well, you had a 33% chance of that happening by dumb luck anyway so it doesn’t prove anything.  However, it should be encouraging. So you recode and retest to see if you pick the odd sample again.  If you can do this a couple times then you can have confidence that there might be some difference.  You’ll have to then move to a panel of a few people and see if they can find any difference.

  
  

  Well, that’s the basics of the test anyway.

  Cosmetic formula testing - Triangle Test

• 

  David08848

  Member

  August 13, 2015 at 9:23 pm

  Perry,  Thanks for the quick reply!  This makes sense.  Typically for a surfactant product what would be the best sample batch size to make keeping in mind that my samples for all of these surfactants are typically about 8 oz. with a couple being 16 oz. and a couple of 32 oz. bottles?

  Thanks!
  David…surrounded by surfactant bottles…
  (there is more information on this site I didn’t even know existed!)

• 

  OldPerry

  Member

  August 13, 2015 at 10:03 pm

  Well, I always made a minimum of 400g batches but you might reduce that if you have limited samples.  Smaller samples result in much more variability however.

• 

  Chemist77

  Member

  August 14, 2015 at 5:17 pm

  @Perry maybe I am a latecomer but heard it first from you, what a great suggestion that for blind testing and differentiation.

• 

  Bobzchemist

  Member

  August 14, 2015 at 6:40 pm

  @David08848,

  Most of the professional cosmetic chemists today (including me) learned on-the-job with essentially unlimited supplies, at least of the basic ingredients. The selection of ingredients was overwhelming, even many years ago, and it’s gotten worse since then. The solution most of us chose was to pick out 2 or 3 ingredients per category, and get really familiar and knowledgeable about them (to the point where, if you knew which chemist specialized in which ingredient, you could pick up a commercial product, look at the ingredient list, and know who formulated it)

  I’d suggest that you do the same, at least as close as you can. You’ve picked out 4 surfactants that should work well together. Make an investment in learning, and buy 5 gallon pails of each. Then, you can make larger batches and worry less about getting the formula perfect the first time, and enjoy experimenting.
• 

  AuroraBorealis

  Member

  August 14, 2015 at 6:56 pm

  “… you could pick up a commercial product, look at the ingredient list, and know who formulated it)”

  
  @Bobzchemist : One of my earlier mentors told me the exact same thing when I started in the industry and I thought he’s joking. Now 8 years later, I have a 80% hit rate when I call out the formulator from the ingredient list in my country (which isn’t that big, but still!). 

  
  
• 

  David08848

  Member

  August 14, 2015 at 8:39 pm

  Robert,  You were lucky that you had all that available to you!  Through resellers online am able to pick up larger sizes of surfactants and have CAPB, Decyl Glucoside, SMC Taurate, Sodium Lauryl Sulphoacetate and more on-hand so that helps!  Some of the surfactants like Sodium Lauryl Methyl Isethionate came in a 32 oz. sample bottle so that helps especially since I have decided that I want that as my main surfactant!  When you order samples online from chemical companies you can always try asking for the largest size they offer and often they’ll comply!  You can also ask more than one company for the same chemical.  After all, you are a potential customer and you want to make sure what you are being offered is consistent from company to company as well as consistent from batch to batch!  I am at the point where I only order what I really think I will use and usually do my research ahead of time to make sure!

  Your suggestion about selecting 3 or 4 ingredients is right up my alley and I tend to do that anyway.  What was most important was hearing from another source ” You’ve picked out 4 surfactants that should work well together” and that was the aim of this post so thanks for the observation that I seem to be on the right track!  I see what you mean when I look at formulas from each of the chemical companies - Colonial Chemicals seems to have a “connecting thread” from formula to formula as do other companies so it is totally logical that you could pick out the formulator from his or her formulation!

  I also spent more time online looking up body wash and then listing names of surfactants like Sodium Lauryl Methyl Isethionate and SMC Taurate.  I was amazed at how many ingredients lists of products contained both and also interesting the “positioning” of the these ingredients in a formula.  After a while some patterns did seem to emerge and I saved all of the ingredients lists to compare!  The last thing I am going to do is to put together a final list of “the players” with observations about their purposes in a formula, their actives, their pH and some additives I might wish to include.  From there I can start “playing” with ingredients and see what I come up with!  I like your suggestion about zeroing in on a few surfactants and making them the base of some of your formulations.  It’s like when I was studying Music in college and as a singer, lyric baritone, I would learn new pieces and add them to my repertoire.  Here I am trying to emulate you great cosmetic chemists and add ingredients in my chemical repertoire to produce good products!

  Thanks to all for the support and to Perry for heading up this great board!

  David

• 

  David08848

  Member

  August 26, 2015 at 10:13 pm

  I have had more success lately finding “sample” formulas to begin with
  so I’m starting to put together test formulas.  I found more “old”
  formulas from some of the chemical companies like Innospec at the
  Cosmetics & Toiletries site so that might be a good place to go if
  you’re in my situation!  More makes it easier to compare and to see
  patterns in the formulations.  Now I’m starting to think of additives
  like polyquarternium-7 or 10, PEG-7 Glyceryl Cocoate, glycerin… any suggestions?

  Thanks!
  David

• 

  belassi

  Member

  August 27, 2015 at 5:18 am

  Keep it simple. Body wash is a commodity product available at the dollar store and you can’t compete with them on price. Put too many fancy ingredients in a rinse-off product and it becomes completely uncompetitive. I put a refattening agent in mine (Lamesoft PO-65 at 1%) because it acts as a foaming agent allowing me to reduce the surfactant by 1%, and also acts as a soluble emollient. A lot of benefit for a low cost. 

• 

  David08848

  Member

  August 27, 2015 at 1:09 pm

  Belassi,  I agree with you about keeping it simple.  Each ingredient has got to have a purpose and label wow isn’t part of my philosophy!  Still, I want to have enough ingredients on the list so it is taken seriously.  I am always suspicious if a product has a really small ingredients list.

  I checked out the Lamesoft PO-65 online which is available from resellers (The Chemistry Store) but I don’t want to use something I can only get from one supplier so I’ll check around and see what I find.  I am also considering using Crothix (for one of the products) as it has other characteristics besides thickening.

  Thanks!

• 

  RobertG

  Member

  December 21, 2015 at 1:37 am

  I can lay out my experience, the product of which is explained at http://users.bestweb.net/~robgood/lather.html

  When I became aware that someone I knew had 3 children who liked playing in thick foam in the bathtub, such as bubble bath or shaving cream, but that the oldest of them would suffer an irritant vulvitis or vulvovaginitis if too much bubble bath was used or if she sat in shaving cream, I took that as a challenge.  I’d dabbled in foaming surfactants before, and was familiar with literature on them as concerned general mildness — in particular the property of mixtures of certain betaine & anionic surfactants to reduce each other’s skin & eye irritancy, and also of sulfosuccinate surfactants to stretch the foaminess of more irritating anionics without adding to their irritancy.  I wasn’t sure this would work in the particular case of urogenital irritation, which involves both skin & mucous membranes and affects a region rather than a tissue type, but I figured it was worth a shot.

  I started with a 3-component mixture of sodium lauryl ether-3 sulfate, lauramidopropyl dimethyl glycine betaine, and diammonium lauryl sulfosuccinate monoester, using the last component as the chief surfactant, the betaine as both adding to & stabilizing the foam, and the ether sulfate as the most variable component, down to 0 or up to approximately equal to the sulfosuccinate.  I quickly settled on what I considered to be an optimal ratio of sulfosuccinate to betaine, and found the foaming qualities of the mixture to be most responsive to changes in the ether sulfate, from most lathery but least voluminous & stable at 0 of that component to fluffier & more stable (when left undisturbed, but becoming more fragile if played with) as that component was increased.  The same could be achieved by increasing the ratio of betaine to sulfosuccinate, but only by larger degrees, i.e. less responsively.

  This was a time when makers of such surfactants were much more generous about sending out free samples, so I had enough to play with in small amounts, and could use volumetrics such as pipets for small experiments because the components were supplied as solutions.  The solutions came with their own preservative, which was nice because the final product could be formulated without additional preservative as long as the total was undiluted; I had no intention of watering the mixture if I could help it, since it would not be more convenient for users to pour out larger volumes.

  I also experimented with powdered ingredients to make a tablet product.  Disodium lauryl sulfosuccinate was conveniently supplied as a powder.  Of alkamidopropyl betaines, however, all I could get was an experimental spray-dried cocamidopropyl betaine from Henkel, which was hygroscopic & gummy but still served.  Such a mixture worked, but since I wanted to optimize components of which many were supplied only in solution, and I didn’t want to complicate life by using adsorbents or using drying technology, I did most of my experiments in solution.

  I went beyond the initial test subjects (the family I made the stuff for), but it was hard to find good, reproducible cases of people sensitive to vulvitis, vaginitis, or (male or female) urethritis from soaps & other surfactant products likely to contact their genitals.  Far more people suspect they or their child have such a problem than can prove they have it.  Anyway, I found with a wider subject base that sodium lauryl ether-3 (or 2.5 mole EO or whatever undisclosed ethoxylation is actually used) sulfosuccinate, which I’d previously determined acted like a mixture of ether sulfate & alkyl sulfosuccinate in the 3-component system in terms of foaming, was even less prone to cause vulvitis in a very stringent test on someone who usually suffered such a condition if they let soap contact their groin in the shower, and who was pregnant at the time of the test, which generally increases such sensitivity, and who used my mixtures both as bubble bath & directly as peri-vaginal wash.  So I dropped the ether sulfate entirely in favor of replacing some of the lauryl sulfosuccinate with laureth sulfosuccinate.

  I tried various other anionics here & there, discovering for instance that sodium lauryl sarcosinate, which is ordinarily viewed as a more lathery, less fluffy foamer, acted similarly to the ether sulfate in making the 3-component mixture produce a fluffier, drier, more polyhedral foam.  I also tried out components supplied with longer alkyl moieties such as myristyl sulfosuccinate (experimentally produced by McIntyre) and a great many betaine varieties.  I found that a mixture of lauramidopropyl and palmitamidopropyl/cetamidopropyl betaine made foam that was better in all respects than the more commonly used cocamidopropyl betaine.  Fortunately lauramidopropyl betaine is widely available; unfortunately palmitamidopropyl betaine is not, unless you want to make a large order.  Perhaps if the Bissett-Mao formula of Ivory Dishwashing Liquid had stayed on the market (I eventually met Don Bissett at a photobiology conference, where his interest was in sunscreens and mine was in melanin as UV-protective), palmitopropyl betaine would be a commoner article of commerce.  I still think there’s a lot of potential for makers of toiletry surfactants to vary average chain length of the alkyl groups, the way soapmakers do by varying the proportions of fats they use.

  For my patent I had to devise a way to measure density of foams.  I’m indebted to a tech at the lab I employed who figured out drilling holes in sample vials would allow them to be packed with foam for weighing without air pockets in the bottom.

  I did a lot of esthetic testing, mostly with children, to verify that children mostly did prefer to sacrifice foam volume to density, and that many adults liked it that way too.  So I tended to refer to the mixture as “lather bath” rather than “bubble bath”.  A few children, though, didn’t like the way dense foam blocked their view of bathtub toys.

  I eventually did find a test subject who, if he took a bath with my mixture 3 days in a row, did experience some urethritis.  Surprisingly, it was a male subject, one of the few grown men I got to try the stuff.  It still allowed him to use it much more often than he could use common bubble baths w/o pain, but it said the mixture’s irritancy was not 0, just far lower than that of anything else I could find that was this foamy, and low enough to make a difference to sensitive users who wanted to bubble-bathe, especially frequently or for long soaks or with lots of foam, or to wash their groin with something stronger than plain water — or to masturbate with!  I wouldn’t recommend it as genital lube under ordinary circumstances, but only if you’re going to be in a bath anyway.  I did not try testing its efficacy as spermicidal foam, and suspect it would not be anywhere near as effective as nonoxynol-9, given the ability of nonionic surfactants of that class to depolarize cellular membranes.  (There’s a pretty simple test for that potential, though: apply a solution to your lips & wait to see if paresthesias or numbness develop.)

  I also tested it for foam dancing.  It worked spectacularly well as concentrate in the machine of one Miami entrepreneur, who tested such machines in his shop driveway & invited neighborhood kids for a foam party.  It rained when he tried mine, and was surprised at how long the foam held up rather than being quickly knocked down by rain as the solution the usually used was.  But his was cheaper, from a large production stream for baby shampoo.

• 

  RobertG

  Member

  December 21, 2015 at 2:38 am

  Whew, I ran up against the character limit & I was only a little ways into gushing about my experience.  Anyway, David, you’re partly on the right track but there are still some gotchas.

  First, decide, what properties you want to optimize.  You’ve already done that.  Also, you’ve listed what you consider to be the candidate ingredients for doing so, based on general principles.  That’s good, but that will give answers that are partly right, partly wrong, when it comes to mixtures.  For instance, my experience seemed in line with the previously published data that say alkamidopropyl betaines & at least certain anionic surfactants reduce each other’s irritancy, and showed it was probably true of more anionics than had been known about.  OTOH, lauryl sarcosinate had exactly the opposite foam characteristic in my mixtures than when studied alone or in some other mixtures.

  Also, consider the possibility that reviews rating the overall performance of certain ingredients may be based in part on criteria different from what you’re interested in.  You wrote, “Disodium Laureth Sulfosuccinate – did not get a good review here”.  I haven’t seen that review, but I’ll point out that the industry doesn’t use sulfosuccinate esters as much as it might, because of the instability of that ester linkage.  Carboxylate esters are labile, which fact is both the boon & the bane of soapmaking.  Were they not, we may not have discovered soap as early was we did.  However, many kettle process soapmakers have had the experience of saponification happening too fast.  Well, it’s true of sulfosuccinate esters too — not as much when there are linking groups introduced as via ethoxylation as in the direct alkyl esters — but still enough that mfrs. aren’t so happy making them, and don’t keep them for long, and formulators may be somewhat reticent to use them.  I’ve had my mixture react quickly & unpleasantly with a lemon verbena fragrance oil one formulator tried, for instance.  But once you eliminate such possibilities, it turns out that the sulfosuccinates in my mixture are reasonably stable; the batch I had made by FMI has rather clotted & tends to separate, but it’s over a decade old now, which would be asking a lot for most liquid products.

  (Acyl isethionates are carboxylate esters too.  If you’re very partial to using certain fragrance or essential oils, and you want to incorporate a carboxylate ester such as an isethionate, sulfosuccinate, sulfoacetate, lactylate, or glutamate, better check it out at the pH & temperature you expect to process at, to make sure that FO or EO doesn’t break it down.)

  Or it may be that people are just generally down on ethoxylation products now, concerned with 1,4-dioxane contamination.  That may or may not be your or your customers’ concern, however.  And even if it is their concern, that may not be as great a concern once your products hit the market.

  Also, sodium isethionate can be used for thickening, but is it any better viscosity builder than simpler salts in shower gels that don’t incorporate acyl isethionates?  It’s going to be more effective in some mixtures than in others for the cost.  Similarly, cocamidopropyl betaine will extremely thicken some mixtures and hardly affect others.

• 

  David08848

  Member

  September 17, 2016 at 4:25 pm

  Sorry, Robert!  I just found this.  I must have missed it because it was four months after my last post…

  As you can tell, I’m back at trying to formulate the body wash and am doing my research as I always do!  Thanks for the replies everyone!

  Belassi, thanks again for the suggestion.  I would like something that is a soluble emollient and it is available from resellers, which is good in the beginning of a new project.  If you are anyone else has any other suggestions, I am open to hearing them!  Thanks!

• 

  MarkBroussard

  Member

  September 17, 2016 at 4:56 pm

  Or, you could just use Iselux Ultra Mild and supplement it with a high foamer such as Oramix CG110 from Seppic.

  Iselux® Ultra Mild

  Innospec Performance Chemicals

  INCI Name: Aqua (and) Sodium Lauroyl Methyl Isethionate (and) Cocamidopropyl Betaine (and) Sodium Methyl Oleoyl Taurate (and) Lauryl Glucoside (and) Coco-Glucoside

• 

  David08848

  Member

  September 17, 2016 at 5:32 pm

  Mark,  I appreciate your suggestions.  Although, I do try to stay away from bases as you are locked into buying them from that supplier but it does include several of the surfactants I wish to use.  I could try and create something similar myself…

  I did like the sound of Oramix CG110 and Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside and it was available from at least one reseller online.  Also, it touts itself as being “green” which is a good selling point!  I’m open to any other suggestions you may have!  They are appreciated!

• 

  belassi

  Member

  September 17, 2016 at 9:17 pm

  I tried the Iselux and it does indeed need a high foaming supplement. My existing formulation is high foam and less expensive so I didn’t continue with Iselux. And … it’s from Innospec so, unless you will be buying 55 pound pails?

• 

  David08848

  Member

  September 18, 2016 at 2:22 pm

  Belassi,

  Are you specifically referring to the Iselux Ultra Mild as needing a “high foaming supplement”?  I certainly understand about the available sizes and painfully aware of the “upcharges”!  Although I would be buying a 55 lb. pail I don’t need those “upcharges” from a company such as Innospec when I have a local supplier who is kind enough to just bring them to me with no shipping charges!  I just have to work within the companies offerings so sometimes that can be limiting.  I’m fortunate to be in New Jersey where there are many chemical companies within driving distance so I could even pick them up myself.  This is why I prefer to formulate something myself and not have to buy a base from one company!

• 

  belassi

  Member

  September 18, 2016 at 2:32 pm

  Yes I tried it. It was “OK” but not as good as my formulation.

• 

  David08848

  Member

  September 18, 2016 at 2:38 pm

  Belassi!

  Thanks, that’s good to know!

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