[Bill_Toge]

if you’re struggling to thicken your product, and your supplier refuses to disclose the active surfactant level of your SLS/SLES, it suggests your supplier is watering one or both of them down

the easiest way to check that is by measuring the density with a hydrometer

from experience, I’ve found that a 25-28% solution of SLES has a density of around 1.1 g/cm³ at 20°C; if it’s significantly lower than that, your materials have almost certainly been watered down

[Bill_Toge]

if you’re not intending to run a full microbiology lab I’d suggest outsourcing it to a third party; it will need an awful lot of investment in the site, equipment and specially qualified/trained staff

[Bill_Toge]

In the absence of any local suppliers, I’ve had a crack at making it myself.

Procedure:

1. Saponify the coconut oil into a soap and let it stand for several days to cure.

2. Acidify the soap with an excess of hydrochloric acid and mix until all solids are dissolved.  The mixture will split into two layers.

3. Decant the top layer into a suitable container - this is the fatty acid fraction.

The end product is more crude and turbid than the distilled product, and it has a stronger smell, but the fact it has that characteristic chip-pan smell and melting point below skin temperature seems to indicate it’s the right stuff.

The soap took several hours to dissolve as I had used caustic soda and refined coconut oil, resulting in a very hard, solid soap; I’ll try virgin coconut oil and potassium hydroxide next time.

All in all, a generally successful experiment!

[Bill_Toge]

if this had happened 100 years ago it could almost be something out of H. P. Lovecraft, notwithstanding the notion that truth is stranger than fiction

[Bill_Toge]

try adding PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil as well, say at 5% to start with; that can contribute a lot to texture and hold of this type of product

[Bill_Toge]

you could try using carrageenan instead of HPMC; that makes formulas shear-thinning without substantially increasing the viscosity, and I know from experience that it works well in a foamer pack

at my last place we used hexylene glycol to thin surfactant-based products, it’s very effective at low levels

[Bill_Toge]

also, many carbomers will ‘hydrate’ in polar protic solvents other than water, e.g. glycerine or propylene glycol; you may need to heat them to incorporate them fully

[Bill_Toge]

@Doreen my old gaffer frequently used to mutter “stupid machine!” whenever dealing with computers, though that was mainly because our IT systems were so unreliable we’d have been better off with typewriters

[Bill_Toge]

if you’re getting fallout, that suggests one or more of your materials is radioactive; I’d suggest using a Geiger counter to work out which one(s) it is

[Bill_Toge]

VP/VA copolymer is more water-resistant and flexible, meaning it’s less prone to flaking

[Bill_Toge]

also CTAC is cationic, and is inherently incompatible with the anionics

[Bill_Toge]

in the dry form industrial nitrocellulose is EXTREMELY flammable and very temperamental, by far the most dangerous material used in cosmetics and toiletries

flammable solvents are well-behaved if stored and handled correctly, but nitrocellulose catches fire at the slightest provocation, and because it’s oxygen-rich, the fire is self-sustaining, meaning it is very difficult to put out

[Bill_Toge]

@mikethair the view taken over here is that the vast majority of thermoplastics, bar a few materials used for caps, are recyclable, and in the UK at least, local authorities have people segregate their plastic/glass/paper waste from the rest of their household waste, and have it sent to a specialist facility to be recycled

this system is in place in many other European countries as well, and while it’s in place, it renders bulk dispensers unnecessary

[Bill_Toge]

@Powerad99 without seeing an actual physical sample of it, and your potential competitors’ products, I can’t make any meaningful comment

[Bill_Toge]

@Powerad99 what do you want to improve about your product?

@Belassi the only thing I have against products like this are that UK-based customers who want them tend to be fussy, indecisive, inveterate time-wasters, who can’t/won’t commit to any substantial orders, and if they do, they constantly move the goalposts, meaning that stock gets rejected on delivery for the most arbitrary reasons; in other words, unless you sell them to a wholesaler who then sells them on to individual customers, they’re commercial suicide

[Bill_Toge]

it introduces an unknown element to the process: namely, what has the consumer done with the container before bringing it in to be refilled

should the product become contaminated due to a dirty container, the contamination would not be detected by the authorities unless a serious adverse effect occurred as a result of its usage, because the product by that point is no longer for sale, and it was (presumably) clean when it was sold

it also brings up the issue of declared weights, which is relatively minor as far as the consumer is concerned, but could potentially fly back and hit the retailer in the face: is the product consistently filled to the declared volume, within the tolerances required by law?

in summary: my opinion is that this is a bad idea, and the issues listed above are the most likely reason why this is generally not done in Europe

[Bill_Toge]

@Belassi it doesn’t, and therein lies the problem

[Bill_Toge]

no, it’s very heat-resistant (as are VP/VA copolymers)

[Bill_Toge]

first of all, HLB is not a high-precision system, rather a practical guideline; as long as the HLB of your emulsifier system is within ±1 unit of the oil phase’s required HLB, and chemically compatible with it, you should be OK

also Pemulen is ionic, so it doesn’t have an HLB

fatty alcohols are not emulsifiers; they are surface-active, but the hydrophilic part of the molecule is too small for them to act as effective emulsifiers

neither PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil nor GMS are particularly effective emulsifiers in combination; we used to manufacture a product with this system which was notorious for being difficult to mix, prone to separation during cooldown, and turning out visibly different nearly every time it was made; it sounds like this is what’s happening here

I’d suggest adding ceteareth-20 to your emulsifiers, that should make the phases easier to mix together, and hopefully resolve your issue

[Bill_Toge]

yeah, you need a high-shear mixer of some kind to mix the phases together

[Bill_Toge]

yes / no / maybe (delete as applicable)

[Bill_Toge]

@Belassi that sounds very suspicious; monoethanolamine has a very strong fishy smell, so DMAE (its N,N-dimethylated derivative) is likely to have a similar smell

also, looking at online data, it appears the melting point of DMAE is −59°C, so by rights the pure substance should be a liquid at room temperature

for that reason, I strongly suspect that whatever you have is not DMAE

[Bill_Toge]

if DMDM hydantoin creates any kind of smell, it’ll be formaldehyde

the smell of formaldehyde is very hard to describe if you’ve not smelt it before; it smells sterile and slightly acrid rather than sulphurous

[Bill_Toge]

which grade of silica did you use? they are by no means interchangeable

[Bill_Toge]

it increases the viscosity at high shear, i.e. makes the product feel more ‘creamy’; try 3% and see if that works for you