[Bobzchemist]

Truly pure water is hard to achieve - H2O by itself is somewhat corrosive.

Your water doesn’t need to be pure - just consistent, so that the pH, electrolyte level, TOC, etc. are kept constant and removed as variables in your search for what’s gong wrong.

[Bobzchemist]

Keep dropping the powder levels. 0.10% is a good starting point, and then try 0.01% if that doesn’t work.

Why are you using so much? Are you under the impression that colostrum powder actually has any effect on skin?

[Bobzchemist]

This is a good time to point out some ways of thinking logically about troubleshooting.

Guiding principle: A batch made exactly the same way with exactly the same materials in the same place will turn out with the same properties and characteristics as the other batches made exactly the same way with exactly the same materials in the same place.

This also means that when we see variability in a finished batch, that there MUST be a variability in either the raw materials, the processing, or the environment. Nothing happens magically.

Problem: Variability in finished product

Symptom: Cloudiness

The way to isolate what’s going wrong is to start eliminating variables. For example, are you using pure water? How do you know it’s pure? And so on.

[Bobzchemist]

I’m sorry, @nasrins, but I don’t see a question I can answer. What specifically do you want to know?

[Bobzchemist]

For the most part, companies will only interact with you if you are both able and likely to at least buy their minimum order quantity of the chemical you are interested in. This quantity is usually vastly more than a home crafter or a solo formulator/consultant can ever hope to purchase.and use in a reasonable amount of time. 

The minimum order quantity depends on who the supplier is - Inolex might sell as little as a 5-gallon pail, while Dupont won’t talk to you unless you unless you are buying a 10,000 gallon tank car of material. Fortunately, there are distributors who earn a living by buying bulk quantities and splitting it up into smaller containers for their customers. But even distributors have minimum quantities, and you probably need less than that. 

The only way around this is to either set up a group purchase with other small quantity users or attempt to get a small-volume retailer, Brambleberry, for example, interested in carrying the chemical.

Where are you located?

[Bobzchemist]

http://www.cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/smartlead/view/242169/4/Enhancing-on-Hair-Deposition-of-Silicone

http://www.airproducts.com/~/media/downloads/d/deposilk-q1/data-sheets/en-deposilk-q1-datasheet-165-11-011-GLB-Jan12.pdf?tradeName=Deposilk-Q1&D

http://msdssearch.dow.com/PublishedLiteratureDOWCOM/dh_003c/0901b8038003c402.pdf?filepath=amerchol/pdfs/noreg/324-00181.pdf&fromPage=GetDoc

http://www.cosmeticsandtoiletries.com/formulating/function/aids/119693784.html

[Bobzchemist]

pH too high could also be a problem, as well as hard water. After you’ve done what @milliachemist suggests, try adding a chelating agent.

Also, some quats will enhance silicone deposition, allowing the use of less silicone.

[Bobzchemist]

You are comparing apples to oranges…

[Bobzchemist]

Glycerin and the rest of the mess are not readily soluble in each other, although the nonionic polyalkyline glycol may be a coupler, may be an emulsifier - or maybe not. The silicone is probably your culprit - it’s not soluble in any of the other ingredients. Try taking it out.

It looks like you’re mostly succeeding at making an anhydrous emulsion. Congratulations - they are rare.

For better results, I’ve got to have more detail in the formula than that - at least INCI names

[Bobzchemist]

I agree, @gfeldman, that was really good.

For supplier lit, it’s sometimes hard to find - you need to know how. (Of course, if you are on Innovadex/Prospector or SpecialChem, this is a bit easier - just look there.)

Take Peg-14 Dimethicone. A quick Google search tells us it’s also known as ABIL B8843, and it’s sold by Evonik.

Next, we go to a great source of information - the PCPC International Buyer’s Guide.

http://buyers.personalcarecouncil.org/jsp/BGSearchPage.jsp 

We’re trying to find out if any other manufacturer makes this chemical.

I got these results:

Ingredient Name	Supplier Name
PEG-14 Dimethicone (INCI)	Evonik Industries AG
	Glenn Corporation
	Universal Preserv-A-Chem, Inc.

Since I know that Glenn and UPI are distributors, I know that Evonik is the only manufacturer.

Go to their website: http://personal-care.evonik.com/product/personal-care/en/Pages/home.aspx

and search for PEG-14 Dimethicone.

or, google ABIL B8843.

I got http://www.finecon.sk/admin/pdf/DS_ABIL_B_8843_e.pdf, which has some good info.

Not all supplier lit is online. You will either need to go to a trade show or make many phone calls to get everything you’ll need.

[Bobzchemist]

I’d be shocked if you can get more than 0.50 - 1.00% stably emulsified - And I think you’ll need closer to 40 or 50% glucoside in water.

[Bobzchemist]

When I’ve worked on similar products, I’ve started with the organic oil, and then determined which organo-silicone it was soluble (not dispersible) in. Then, I would use that mixture to see if it was soluble in silicone. If not, I would add either more of the first or another organo-silicone and try the solubility tests in silicone again. Sometimes it took combinations of three or four solubilizers before I got a stable mixture. 

I don’t know of any way of calculating this - I’ve always done it by trial and error.

[Bobzchemist]

Isn’t a sugar beat a type of salsa rhythm?

[Bobzchemist]

You need organo-silicones to couple the synthetic silicones to the organic oils (organic as in chemistry, not agriculture) Phenyl Trimethicone is a good starting point.

[Bobzchemist]

The best place to start is to read the supplier literature - the brochures the chemical manufacturers use to persuade chemists to use their products.

[Bobzchemist]

Analyzing your hair will cost a great deal of money. You’d be much better off “analyzing” the performance of various commercial products on your hair first. Keep records, and figure out what works best on which sections of your hair. It’s possible to formulate a product that works well on all different types of hair, so don’t be suprised if you find one or two. @Perry has written some good blog posts describing how to evaluate hair products.

[Bobzchemist]

I would strongly suggest that you pay your formulators generously and often  

[Bobzchemist]

Oh, and by the way - the FDA takes a very, very dim view of testing for specific results, i.e. running the same test multiple times until you get the results you want. This applies to assay results and micro results, as well as SPF panel results.

[Bobzchemist]

Ahhh…I understand.

The FDA requirement for an Active Ingredient assay qualification is +/- 10% of the active ingredient. So, if you are claiming 10% active, for example, the FDA range is 9.0 - 11.0% assayed active. What that means in practice is that any assay result of 8.9% or lower, or 10.1% or higher results in a failed batch that must be destroyed. (Yes, destroyed. If you are playing strictly by the rules, once an OTC drug batch is finished, the active ingredient levels cannot be changed or altered in any way).

Knowing that the consequences for going out of spec are so severe, I would absolutely insist on a Certificate of Analysis from my dispersion vendor that gave the PRECISE amount of ZnO in each lot of dispersion, or I’d find another vendor. If I could, I would analyze the ZnO percent of each lot of dispersion myself, as well.

I understand that dispersion suppliers don’t want to commit to a tight specification on their TDS or sales specs, because the exact ratio of powder to carrier is going to vary depending on the absorption characteristics of the lot of powder that is being dispersed. Further, the absorption characteristics of the powder depends more on the particle size and particle size distribution of the particles than on the chemistry, so it’s a much harder (and more expensive) variable to tightly control.

The bad news is that this all boils down to the fact that you’ll have to adjust the amount of dispersion that you use in your formula each time you get a new lot of dispersion in-house. The good news is that it’s job security, after a  fashion.

[Bobzchemist]

I don’t know, but I’d very much like to find out. Does anyone know the answer to this?

[Bobzchemist]

Good question.Why don’t you test them both and find out?

[Bobzchemist]

Notice that your original formula has 4.5k of Olive Oil and only 3k of wax (The stearic acid isn’t doing much, if anything) Since the emulsifying wax is really the wrong kind of wax for this product, it might as well not be there. I got the numbers I did by back calculating - 4.5k of olive oil is 20% of x - and then applied the general formula I gave above to the total batch size (x = 22.5 kilos)

You should also do some business calculations - can you mix, fill and sell 22.5 kilos of product? Is the cost of the adjustment (8 kilos of petrolatum and 10-11k of microcrystalline/parafin wax or beeswax) more than the cost of the materials in the batch you’re fixing? Basically, you need to figure out if this is worth fixing, or if you’d be better off by throwing it all away and starting over. You may want to postpone this decision until after you see how your 1 kilo test adjustment comes out, first. You might get something nice that’s easy to sell, or you might get something…not so nice. If you can’t sell it relatively quickly, you could have a bunch of money tied up in inventory for a long time.

Good Luck

[Bobzchemist]

@Bill_Toge is right. Hair creams require water. What you are making is what we call a pomade in the US.

Water-based hair creams are very tricky - you’d be better off fixing your failed pomade into something nice. Don’t try water-containing products without more experience.

What’s going wrong is basic cosmetic chemistry:

Waxes are firm solids, and oils are thin liquids. When you mix the two of them together, you get a mixture of their properties. If you have mostly wax in your mixture, you will get a firm solid. Mostly oil, and you get a thin liquid. If you use less oil, or more wax, your product will firm up.

Also, you are using the wrong wax. Emulsifying wax is really only useful when making emulsions. But that can be for next time.

To save this batch, you need about 8 kilos of petrolatum (petroleum jelly) and about the same amount or more (~10-11k) of microcrystalline/parafin wax. If you use a high melt point petrolatum, or a low melt point microcrystalline/parafin wax, you might get away with a little less than 10k. Beeswax might be a good substitute for the microcrystalline/parafin wax. Basically, you should be about 35% Petrolatum, 45% wax and waxy solids (yes, the shea butter is a waxy solid), and 20% oils. You may need to filter some things out - they are more water-soluble.

Basically, I’d take a 1 kilo sample of your batch (it makes the math easier), melt it down and, and start adding petrolatum and parafin wax until I got a product I could sell, then fix the big batch using the same proportions. That way, If you add too much wax to the small sample, you can try again with a fresh sample. If you keep careful records, you should be able to put the sample batches back into the large batch when you fix it. (http://books.google.com/books?id=iHEWCNUetvMC&pg=PA160&lpg=PA160&dq=pomade+formulations+microcrystalline+wax&source=bl&ots=61v9QMJtUp&sig=qf7S-67xZ-EORXnTlQmc52ymh3s&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2Ix2U8iHJcKQqAaLmYKgAQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=pomade%20formulations%20microcrystalline%20wax&f=false )

 Not the recommended way of product development, but probably better than throwing away many pounds of materials. You may also want to test throwing in a decent amount of coconut oil after you get the oils gelled up with the wax/petrolatum mixture, depending on the extent to which coconut oil is considered a good hair dressing.

[Bobzchemist]

Amazon has a listing indicating that this is a monograph OTC drug product listing Dimethicone at 1.5% as their active ingredient.

[Bobzchemist]

This is only OK in the US if it’s a monograph OTC drug product.