Bobzchemist
Forum Replies Created
-
You’re probably going to need to get it from a food manufacturer/distributor.
In the US, 80% or so of the corn grown here is a GMO, and there’s no way to separate out the non-GMO corn from the GMO corn. As a result, as far as I know, corn oil has been eliminated as a commonly available cosmetic ingredient, due to anti-GMO consumer pressure. -
She wants full-time.
-
I haven’t found any, and we’ve used it for years.
-
Stearic acid by itself is a thickening/bodying agent in emulsions. It’s not a very good one, but it was widely used because it used to be so very cheap (it was made from byproducts of the meat packing industry, so the starting feedstock was essentially garbage). Now that the cosmetic grades are all made from vegetable feedstock, the price has gone up exponentially. For some reason, consumers have gotten used to the feel of it in emulsions, so it is still formulated with.
By itself, stearic acid has ZERO emulsifying power. When it is neutralized into a soap, however, it becomes a surfactant/emulsifier. The neutralizing agent can be AMP, TEA, Potassium or Sodium Hydroxide, etc.Neither glycol stearate nor glyceryl stearate are emulsifiers at all. -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saponification
What is the brand name and who is the manufacturer of the self-emulsifying blend you’re referring to? -
There are two ways to do this:
1) Grind the Benzoyl Peroxide powder in the oil finely enough so that it doesn’t settle/sediment out until after your expiration date. The stability of this approach is greatly enhanced if your product has the semi-solid consistency of an ointment/cream.2) Accept that the BP will settle out of a fluid product no matter what you do, and instead of trying to fight it, design your powder phase so that it readily re-disperses with shaking after it settles. -
The skin is a pretty good barrier, and water doesn’t really penetrate. Water and water vapor does, however, go out (TEWL)If you think about it, though, there is much, much more water on the inside of our bodies than on the outside. Keeping that water inside the skin (reducing TEWL) is really the only effective way of moisturizing.
-
It’s not just the allergenicity - most anti-animal-cruelty organizations consider lanolin an animal product and just as bad as using tallow or lard. Some people in the natural products industry even claim that the use of any animal product, including lanolin and/or beeswax, automatically disqualifies a product from being called “natural” (to them, nothing can be natural unless it comes from a plant).
Personally, I don’t understand it. To get lanolin, you just collect it from wool. The sheep aren’t harmed, and I don’t see PETA going after the wool clothing industry.It’s the same with beeswax. Nobody kills bees to get beeswax, and bees are insects, so, rationally, how is beeswax an animal product?Unfortunately, there is no reasoning with these people. -
Inolex Emulsense cationics are worth a look:
-
Emulsions can be created with force alone - think about shaking a vinegar-oil salad dressing - you’ll have a good emulsion for a few seconds, then the oil droplets start to merge/coalesce, and then the emulsion will fall apart.
Emulsion stability happens when you keep the oil droplets from coalescing. This can be done either physically, or chemically (or both).
Physically, you can prevent coalescence by keeping the droplets from ever touching each other - that’s done by increasing the viscosity/yield value/gel strength of your external phase.Chemically, you can also prevent coalescence by keeping the droplets from combining once they have touched each other - that’s usually done by having the correct surfactants and correct amount of the surfactants in your formula. Good chemical stability is usually the result of having a cohesive bi-layer (or larger) of surfactants surrounding each droplet of your inner phase, so that when the droplets touch, only the surfactants touch, and the cores do not.One of the reasons oil and water phases are prepared separately is to ensure that most of the surfactants easily get to their proper places in/around the droplets, instead of forming separate surfactant-only micelles. -
At pH 4, all stearic acid soap reverts back to stearic acid and caustic. Chemically, it is not possible for any fatty acid soap to exist at that pH.
-
If you don’t want to create soap, why are you adjusting pH at all? Where is your final pH ending up? Lastly, what do you think you would be accomplishing in your cream with un-neutralized stearic acid?
And a processing note: Aeration only happens when you pump air into a product, regardless of how much soap is or isn’t in the formula - unless you’ve got something strange going on, gas bubbles do not spontaneously generate. You need to change your agitation/processing methods so that you incorporate less air, particularly during cooldown. -
The first question you have to answer is: how will you test to see if we’re telling you the truth?
-
Leslie,
I can’t speak for anyone else, however, I suspect my motives are fairly common here.I started my cosmetic career at Estee Lauder, which had a fairly large R&D department and our own cafeteria. You’d think we would have wanted to get away from talking about work during lunch, but we actually spent about 90% of our lunch time talking about cosmetic formulations and trying to solve each others formulation problems. (OK, and also picking apart other companies products, and laughing at raw material suppliers exaggerated claims, but still…)I miss that. A lot.I’ve never worked anywhere else since that had that same sort of open, free and easy exchange of ideas between chemists. and I really think that atmosphere had a lot to do with how successful Lauder was at launching new products then.Participating in this forum is the closest thing I can come to having that sense of camaraderie again, particularly since I’m the only cosmetic chemist working at Beaumont Products - the other chemists here just don’t have an appreciation for my kind of chemistry.So, this is my long-winded way of saying welcome to the forum, and that we don’t mind at all if most of the benefit/knowledge exchange is one-sided for a while - we like talking about this stuff.Bob -
@Bati - it is an intriguing question, and not at all inappropriate. I strongly suspect that one of the reasons you didn’t get an answer was because none of us could point to any published results to help you with.
Another reason is probably that this is a fairly advanced question. While I suspect that chemists who are more on the pharma side could answer it, I know that I personally, for example, have no direct experience with this problem - and I hate to make a guesstimate and then be proved wrong.If you ask a question, and no one answers, I don’t think a small amount of nagging about it would be out of line, either. -
Also, keep good track of who has been given your resume, and who you give your resume to. It’s somewhat unprofessional/disorganized looking to give duplicates.
More importantly, any company who’s been given your resume by a recruiter should never, ever get a resume from you directly for at least 6 months - they could use that to try to deny a recruiter their commission.Lastly, while we’re on the subject, please send me your resume. -
Charles B. Chrystal Co.Walsh & Associates, Inc.Southern Clay was bought by Rockwood which was bought by Byk and then was bought by AltanaResources of Nature, Inc.
-
Difference between yield value (yield stress) and viscosity:
-
If I recall correctly, Carbomer and Zinc Oxide do not play well together at all.
(Please note: the ability to do an efficient Google search is getting more and more important in the cosmetic industry, especially since many companies have dumped and/or purged their collections of supplier literature.) -
I am sure that there is at least one small-volume/hobbyist supplier in Australia. I’ll ask around.
China has a problem with accountability and quality. Both problems are linked: if you received a contaminated raw material from a supplier in China, and the supplier refused to replace it, what could you do? At least in the US, the answer to that question is - absolutely nothing. -
It’s possible that either one could be marketing fodder in a cosmetic:
-
@milliachemist, That’s a good question, and I don’t have one easily available.
@MakingSkincare or @The_Microbiologist, do you have anything like this? -
Another thing to consider is Suppliers Day in NJ. If it’s at all possible for you to go, you should. Dress professionally, bring many 1-page resumes, and have a very short intro speech, for example, “Hi, I’m looking for a R&D job. Would you please give my resume to the head of R&D?” and also a 2-3 minute “elevator” speech well-rehearsed and polished. Give your resume to every company that has a booth.
If/when you are talking to people who sell ingredients to the cosmetic industry who have the time to chat a bit, ask them if they know of any open positions at other companies. You might also want to consider asking them about their jobs as sales reps, to see if you want to try that side of the business. -
Do you need help explaining the concept of “some surfactants make preservatives stop working” to your boss?
-
In another post, @The_Microbiologist gave us an unofficial version of an in-lab indicator for challenge test success or failure. It still requires several plate counts, however.
Personally, I think that if your company cannot afford the cost of challenge tests, you should not be making any products that require them. Stick to anhydrous products, it’s less risky, both for your customers and your company.