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Use of essential oil in Home Laundry detergent
I need some help to guide me . I am making my own laundry detergent, with baking soda, washing soda and soap flakes. My soap flakes are especially made for me with 100% coconut oil using Essential oil : which one can be used for a baby ? lavender ? orange ? Others ? and what is the % of Essential oil max that should be used for 1 kg of soap ?
Thank you very much for your help. -
7 Replies
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Unless you’re aiming for a premium market niche, essential oils will be too expensive for a laundry detergent.
Is that a liquid detergent? Because soap flakes can take quite a bit to dissolve, thus inconvenient for the customer to use.
Potassium coconut soap (Potassium cocoate) will be better than Sodium, as the former is more soluble. -
Thanks for your help. No it is not a liquid detergent. It is a powder. You are right, that most of soap flakes are hard to dissolve. Thanks for the Potassium coconut soap (Potassium cocoate)
Is there any natural “scent” that can be used instead of Essential oils ?
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IMO making sure the soap doesn’t go rancid (thus smells) is the first step.
Choosing coconut oil is a great first step as it’s mostly saturated, thus won’t go rancid as fast as other oils do.
You can choose the heavier fractions of oil, the solid and not the liquid ones
as they’re more saturated.Finally you can use hydrogenated coconut oil (or any other fully hydrogenated vegetable oil), for 100% saturation. It’s up to you to see if the word hydrogenated may feel less natural to customers.
As for essential oils
you can try to market an unscented detergent
depending on your country regulations you could even market it as ‘hypoallergenic‘ since it contains no fragrances that could trigger allergies.
Best of luck. Keep us posted. -
Go fragrance free as @Gunther says, appeals better for certain niche groups. I use potassium potassium cocoate in my liquid laundry systems. Works perfectly fine.
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@Chemist77 is yours a liquid or powder?
If powder, how do you prevent K-cocoate particles from sticking to each other and becoming paste-like? -
Nope I have liquid formulation, but in powders they do use CMC if I am not mistaken. This prevents clumping after the addition of slurry in the tower.
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@Gunther @Chemist77
Thank you very much for your tips. Really appreciate. I will follow your advices.The soap will be no scent and 100% from coconut oil but made from Potassium (and not sodium) . And will add a portion of baking soda, and washing soda.
So the formulation will be : 40% Baking Soda, 40% chopped coconut soap, 20% Washing Soda. Do you think I should use some Magnesium Sulfate like in Molly’s suds laundry detergent ?
Thank you so much in advance for your help.
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