Bobzchemist
Forum Replies Created
-
The other things I’ll point out are:
1) Look at how the homecrafters in the US make their soaps. It’s not nearly as involved as that process you mentioned above, even though there may be a two-month or longer curing period. They sell very well. To the best of my knowledge, though, these soaps can’t be extruded.
2) Tallow has been used as a soap ingredient for hundreds of years. It hasn’t fallen out of favor until recently. A tallow/olive oil soap, in the right proportions,could be quite nice. As a meat byproduct, it’s usually pretty cheap.
3) Consider taking the olive oil soap and reversing the reaction to get some of the oleic acid out of your mix (that’s what makes the soap soft), and then re-saponifying what’s left.
-
That should be perfect for general dispersions.
Mark, you might seriously want to try the bow tie coil impeller. The flow pattern may be what you need for the Sclerotium Gum.
-
I don’t think I ever expected to be having this particular conversation on this forum….
-
Lab, pilot or production?
I prefer to use glass beakers. If you’re working in a situation where replacing those beakers isn’t an issue, or if you use stainless steel mixing vessels, I’d suggest an efficient turbine/hydrofoil blade.
http://www.indco.com/shop/impellers/hydrofoilIf you’re working for a smaller company, or are on your own, and replacing beakers is a significant cost, I’d suggest using a somewhat less efficient, but much safer/gentler on beakers, coil/spiral impeller.
http://www.indco.com/shop/search?keyword=coilhttps://www.amazon.com/Talboys-Bow-Tie-Impeller-Diameter-Stainless/dp/B005CJZJIW
Indco has some good information
http://www.indco.com/shop/impellers -
@ozgirl, at the beginning of my career, I worked for two years developing fabric softeners for Unilever. I could help, I just don’t think that this is the place for such a request, even if it had been made politely.
-
If the climbazole works in killing the fungus, why does it matter whether or not the carrier oil feeds the fungus?
Personally, if you’re concerned about this, I think you need to stay far away from any “natural” materials. Use silicones and/or organo-silicones along with the TEC.
-
Sometimes you need an scorecard to keep track of the players. Mearl changed hands a few times and is now ECKART America, a subsidiary of Altana. I’m not sure if they still make guanine for anything but nail polish anymore, if they make it at all.
@gbar, I’m afraid that your information is 20 or 30 years out-of-date. Especially since the rise of PETA/vegans, guanine pearl has been discontinued in at least 99.99% of all cosmetics, and has been for many years.
All pearlescent powders are now either minerals, synthetics, or a combination of both.
-
For personal lube, you need to look at United Guardian’s products (clathrates). 90% of the work has been done for you.
-
I think you need to clarify - are you trying to run a cosmetic microbiology lab, or are you just trying to test cosmetics. For running a lab, my answer applies, for just testing cosmetics, Perry is correct.
-
Here’s the thing - the water in an emulsion doesn’t do anything much. It might feel soothing while it goes on, but it’s completely gone in under an hour. So, making a lotion isn’t going to help you much, if at all. Don’t fall into the trap of believing marketing hype.
I think you have the right idea with adding other oils. The thing to do is to get a bunch of oils/butters to try and see which ones work best for you. Also check using pure CCT to make sure it’s the oil and not the climbazole you’re reacting to.
Allantoin is one of the few “active” ingredients that work, adding it certainly can’t hurt.
If you absolutely want to try an emulsion product, try the shealoe from lotioncrafter, and mix your CCT/climbazole into it cold, rather than try to make something yourself. http://www.lotioncrafter.com/shealoe.html
Make sure you’re keeping your climbazole level constant each time you evaluate an ingredient, or you won’t have a basis for comparison.
-
Let me put another concept out for you to think about.
Essentially, we make emulsified lotions for only two (maybe three) reasons. First, to give our consumers an elegant/pleasant feel while applying the product. Second, to give our consumers the ability to quickly and easily apply a thin uniform layer of our oil phase (which is what does all the work), and the possible third reason is because water is much, much cheaper than any oil.
NONE of these reasons apply to you. If you are making a treatment product for your own use, why are you making an emulsion? The water isn’t helping you, and neither is the emulsifier, or the glycerin. Just apply the climbazole/CCT solution directly to your skin. There’s no need to worry about preservation if you’re careful with your container/closure system.
-
Strength of heat source is how powerful it is in terms of BTU’s/kilocalories per hour. Think of it as the difference in heat generated from a wooden match compared to the heat from a campfire - it’s going to take a lot longer to boil a cup of water with a match than it will with a campfire - or a blowtorch, for that matter.
The longer it takes to heat the water and/or oil you use to the right temp, the longer it will take to get your batch completed.
There are electronic moisture meters available that could help, or you could simply put a sample of soap in a 250F oven for an hour to measure moisture content.
If I were you, I’d use the 52 gallon kettle to heat your brine, then use it for boiling the pitching and settling water. If you try to add room temperature water, your soap process will take a lot longer.
My VERY strong recommendation is for you to focus on making a quality product first, then worry about speeding up your process later.
I found this to be a useful resource, back when we were contemplating making our own organic soap noodles:
https://www.britannica.com/science/soap/Optical-brighteners#ref624625
-
Personally, I’d be looking for maximum rapid absorption into skin. Squalene may be the fastest lipid, but also look at synthetics like DIA, Tricaprylin, etc.
-
Perry has a course for this.
-
I don’t think that there’s a substitute for this, unless some of the other lower molecular weights of PEG will be cheaper for you.
-
short answer is yes. For longer answer, you need a microbiologist.
-
Not a cosmetic product, we can’t help here.
-
As far as I know, when making soap “noodles”, the process runs like this:
Fill tank with oil, heat to ~180F
Add lye slowly while stirring (about 80% of SAP value), wait for reaction to finish
Add boiling hot brine, stir.
Soap floats, brine+glycerine falls to bottom.
Drain brine+glycerine, store for later extraction
Add remaining amount of lye, heat soap to 210F, stir. If you don’t know the SAP value, you can add excess lye and then wash it out with brine at this point.
Add water (or steam) at 200F until soap mass separates. top will be about 70/30 soap to water, bottom will be about 20% soap plus all impurities. Drain bottom layer, save for industrial use if desired.
Drain top layer into trays, allow to dry/solidify. Grind/extrude into noodles, dry further.This process may take several days, depending on the strength of your heat source, but it’s the easiest way to pull impurities, etc. out of oils.
If you have really decent quality oil, you might be able to skip the salting out bit, but that might not work for other properties.
As you scale up, it would probably be easiest to add more kettles, and stagger the processing, so that you have a batch being finished every day.
-
If you use glycol ether, or almost any other volatile other than water, you’re going to have a huge problem with VOC’s.
Water is going to be a problem simply because it evaporates too slowly.
-
Some things to consider:
1) Due to the strength of their bulk buying power, companies that make/sell soap noodles will almost always be able sell you soap noodles cheaper than you can make them yourself.
2) Belassi is correct, leaving glycerin in the soap causes stability problems.
3) If you’re not salting out the soap, you don’t need/can’t use an extruder - the soap will probably be too mushy.
3) To the best of my knowledge, there is no continuous process for soap making available/possible at your scale. Also, continuous process is a huge consumer safety issue - if you get a bad lot of a raw material from your supplier, how do you tell which of your products have the bad material? -
They can be purchased directly from Jeen.
-
Bill, this is one of the essential problems with Chinese goods, in my opinion. If the problem gets too big, the company just crumbles into dust - poof - nothing/no one to sue.
-
Well, a lot depends on what you consider an “oil” to be.
The easiest way to make an oil-free serum into something that has a cream texture is to use silicone elastomer gels and/or emulsions.
Second easiest would be to use something like Jeen’s ICE-T products.