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I think you will be happy with Iselux.

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Wow. I am impressed after seeing those links.

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Maybe pull a spring loaded rubber probe along the surface using some kind of posh spring balance.

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Perhaps you could puff a fine mist of water droplets from a fixed distance and use a travelling microscope to calculate droplet diameter and droplets/sq cm and then pay an expert in such things to use his arcane knowledge of obscure math formulae and advanced physics to formulate an equation that describes the performance of slickness. Then measure your product against it. Maybe PTFE could be at one end of the scale and the other? Well, paper for instance.

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Thinking about it, you might be able to use something like TEA to emulsify the oil.

I still have a nagging doubt. This “dye”, how come I can’t find it using a search engine? You’ve got a mystery material at 2%… what exactly is that and what is the INCI name for it?

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saturated fatty acids likely encourage Malassezia overgrowth and excess unsaturated fatty acids may induce inflammation and scaling.

- yes that one. I’ve seen that before. 

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@ehmod: I hate to tell you this but I have read documents, possibly in pubMed, I can’t recall, you will have to search. What I read, was that oleic acid causes severe damage to the scalp, actually causing the loss of hair in clumps attached to greasy scalp scales. Olive oil is the triglyceride and also causes scalp damage to a somewhat less aggressive degree. Your result appears to confirm this.

As to how to remove olive oil dissolved in a surfactant? Unsurprisingly this is not something commonly encountered. I honestly don’t know. I would have to begin by simultaneously researching on the Web and also doing small scale experiments. EG if I saturate with sodium chloride can I knockout the surfactancy and force the oil to separate out? But then how do I get rid of the salt? And so on. To be honest I suspect you are faced with disposing safely of that whole batch.

You know, all this could have been avoided if you had done what Bob suggested, that is to say, consult a professional. I would have told you in a heartbeat not to add olive oil to any hair product.

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Good grief. I had better tell you now: olive oil causes serious scalp problems. It is well documented.

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Nothing that should cause problems - except, that “uberlan” - Google finds nothing related to that. Please provide a LINK!

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@chemicalmatt, yes, I will post updates. I must chase the supplier for the samples, they haven’t arrived yet. At the moment I am keeping busy working with the Apprecier ascorbic acid project. By the way, I will be interested to know how those mask products do. I tried importing masks in pouches from Korea - they were nice products and the price very reasonable but we totally failed to sell them in our market, (Mexico), we ended up giving them all away as freebies with other products. Another company also tried, with a retail store and in a mall, and got absolutely nowhere.

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Unfortunately you have not specified in sufficient detail what is in your shampoo. “Texapon”? There are a dozen surfactants called by that name. What type? “Luramide”? Do you mean Lauramide DEA? Or what? “Betaine” - which betaine? And since I can’t find “Uberlan 2200” with Google I can only assume you mis-spelt it.

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Patents.

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I should add this: plastic pots usually have a taper to them due to the injection moulding process. Printing your own labels then results in the problem that if you do a rectangular label, it will appear curved when applied. It’s necessary to design and print to the reverse of that curvature, which involves using a program such as Illustrator or Indesign. And then, how long will it take to accurately cut them all to shape? Your result is unlikely to look professional. Printers have cutting machines that can do that in no time at all, then you just peel the labels and apply.

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@isra: It depends what the NaOH is being used for. At 1.4% it looks far too small an amount to be the active cleaning agent (I’m thinking about oven cleaners which are typically very caustic and the action is basically a saponification reaction converting the baked-on grease into soap). But as a pH adjuster why end up with pH11?

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Thanks for that comment. I’ve no idea why some idiot down-voted it. I will try that.

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Thank you for the PDF. What concerns me is that in the UK for instance, in the past, bureaucratic regulations have been used to keep small companies out of the market. For instance, in the 1990s, the cost of passing mandatory government tests kept many innovative companies from competing with inferior products in the telecomms marketplace. I have to wonder what these “safety assessors” are charging for their service.

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“… you’ll need a safety assessment done by a qualified safety assessor in the EU.”

Not that I sell in the EU currently, but I have read the UK regulations for personal care products and I didn’t see anything about that. And the UK is in the EU. Could you provide a link please?

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Update: this C compound is described as “lipophilic” (supposedly the only version of vitamin C that is) and so I tested it this morning to see if it would dissolve in squalene.

It didn’t, so now I suppose I can assume that “lipophilic” is not the same as “soluble in lipids”.

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At pH11 it will saponify grease so yes, it should work fine, but you’d need to use hand protection of course.

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@Microformulation, thanks for that! UL was amazingly fast as was Lubrizol, I had a response from them within the hour. I’m looking forward to continuing. I only have 20g of Apprecier so I can’t afford too many mistakes.

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Looks like the DIS ester is the one I should be trying for. That Noveon ester sample kit looks way cool. I want one of those! I just requested a DIS sample through ULP so we’ll see.

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Er, why do you need an “ethical safety assessor” in the first place?

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Thanks. Now I need to find an ester. I do have a local rep for Schercemol but unfortunately they only stock the heavy end of the line, like SHS, which isn’t fast absorbing. Will investigate further, thanks!

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Nobody commented …

First experiment: unsatisfactory. Tried using a carbomer gel. No way … could see browning taking place = oxidation of the active. Then tried using Glucamate VLT as a thickener but it seems to have synergy with another component, possibly the 0.2% gl acid, and formed a dense mass instead of dissolving!

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“I am from the UK so all products have to go through regulatory stability testing”

- I have seen no regulations to that effect, can you give a link please?