Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating Advanced Questions Viscosity Changes

  • Viscosity Changes

    Posted by filiz on March 9, 2021 at 8:08 am
    How does the amount of surfactant affect viscosity?

    I’m working on hand soap and shower gel. 
    the shower gel has 22% surfactans
    the hand soup has 16% surfactans

    the result of end of the experiments;
    Shower gel viscosity higher than hand soup…

    used surfactans in Hand soup experiment:

    SODIUM
    LAURETH SULFATE 70% -10

    COCAMIDOPROPYL
    BETAINE 35% -3
    Coco Glucoside -0,5

    used surfactans in Shower gel experiment:
    SODIUM LAURETH SULFATE 70% -15

    COCAMIDOPROPYL BETAINE 35% -5
    Coco Glucoside -0,5

    Thank you…

    chemicalmatt replied 3 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
  • 1 Reply
  • chemicalmatt

    Member
    March 10, 2021 at 6:55 pm

    The reason you are seeing a higher viscosity with higher surfactant content is the amount of available water is decreasing. Keep going in this direction and you will soon have a jelly.  However, should you change ratios of these three surfactants you would see higher or lower viscosities due to physical chemistry I am not going to spend time here explaining. 

Log in to reply.