Bobzchemist
Forum Replies Created
-
Please be careful with this. Using penetration enhancers can put you on the razor’s edge as far as the difference between drugs and cosmetics, depending on the “active ingredients” you use.Skin penetration enhancers:http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-heck-is-penetration-enhancer.html
-
@crisbaysauli, this really needs to be in its own discussion.
-
The FDA requires that you prove that your cosmetic products are “safe” before your product is sold. They don’t specify how you have to do this. However, there are potentially dire penalties if you don’t do anything. Lip balms are very definitely a cosmetic product, so you MUST do some testing,
Most companies run, at the very least, a preservative challenge test and a RIPT (Repeat Insult Patch Test) before launch. There are alternative methodologies to the RIPT, but you have to run at least one of them. RIPT and the other safety tests are done on humans, so no animal testing is involved. -
It’s the other way around - 15% or less of sal acid is completely soluble in propanediol, 20% is > a saturated solution.
-
In a lot of cases, professional cosmetic chemists are trying to mimic the actions of a triple-action kettle on a lab scale.
The triple action mixer uses a low speed side-sweep or anchor stirrer, a medium speed stirring propellor or propeller set, and a high speed homogenizer. Most labs use one or two variable speed overhead mixers, with various blades, and then a separate homogenizing mixer to duplicate the actions of this production scale machine.You can make perfectly fine emulsions with just an overhead mixer and the appropriate blades - it just takes more time (and possibly more emulsifier) than using a homogenizing mixer.This is a triple-action kettle. Look at the diagrams to get a better view of what this does: -
The only thing I know for sure is that topical use of the papain enzyme in papaya is something the FDA is not at all happy with. (http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/FDA-2008-N-0481-n.pdf )
AHA’s and BHA’s make perfectly fine, reasonably safe, chemical exfoliants. If you have to use a chemical exfoliant, why move away from something that works?Natural Sourcing (https://www.naturalsourcing.com/category.asp?category=Exfoliants ) sells a whole range of physical natural exfoliants. Much safer than chemical exfoliants, in my opinion.For the curious, this is a picture of a mango seed: http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m150/greenclaws/P1160031.jpg -
I don’t think what you are asking for is possible.
-
Ayla made a good point about pH, but I don’t think you need to go into all the details about Lewis acids/bases, etc. The basic concept of acid + base = salt is good, and you might want to introduce the concept of strong and weak acids/bases, which leads nicely into a discussion of pH buffers.
-
That ingredient list is incorrect, but I would suspect that one of their ingredients has non-denatured alcohol as a carrier/solvent.
-
It’s hard to do this, because understanding most of the fun stuff depends on understanding all the boring fundamentals.
I mostly agree with Mike. Skip the vast majority of inorganic chemistry. I’m not even sure the periodic table is all that important. Concentrate on atoms, molecules and compounds. Briefly touch on electrons, etc. until it’s time to explain charged surfactants. Definitely explain the “everything is a chemical” concept.
Get into organic chem as soon as you can, explaining the most common organic moieties. Spend time on nomenclature and it’s relationship to molecular structure. -
Where are you located?
-
These are the INCI listings for Mango products from the buyers guide.
Hydrolyzed Mango Fruit(INCI)Hydrolyzed Mango Juice Extract (INCI)Mangifera Indica (Mango) Fruit (INCI)Mangifera Indica (Mango) Fruit Extract (INCI)Mangifera Indica (Mango) Juice (INCI)Mangifera Indica (Mango) Leaf Extract (INCI)Mangifera Indica (Mango) Pulp Extract (INCI)Mangifera Indica (Mango) Seed (INCI)Mangifera Indica (Mango) Seed Butter (INCI)Mangifera Indica (Mango) Seed Extract (INCI)Mangifera Indica (Mango) Seed Oil (INCI)There is a listing for just Mangifera Indica (Mango) Seed. But…mango seeds are huge, about the size of a golf ball, so I really doubt they’d be used unprocessed. There are health food products claiming mango seed fiber and/or mango seed powder as ingredients, but I couldn’t find a manufacturer or a distributor. These may be your best bet as a starting point for your search.There are easier to obtain natural exfoliants available. Personally, I’d feel better using something natural coming from a supplier that I know does QC checks and at least tries to keep micro contamination in check. The fact that this material is hard to find with an internet search would raise big red flags for me. -
That’s…interesting - I’ve never seen that on an ingredient list before. Then again, putting “micronized Zinc Oxide” on an ingredient label would be (technically) illegal in the US.
-
Getting the pH up to 12 would make those liquid soaps pretty much self-preserving.
-
Just to let you know - Cromollient is a brand name - it’s like saying Ford. There are at least 6 different Cromollient chemicals, each with different properties. We won’t ever know how to help you much if you don’t tell us which one you’re using.
-
Just to satisfy my curiosity, why do you have an emulsifier in an anhydrous product at all?
Another point, product names usually mean something. When you see an ending of “mollient” that’s a very good indication that it’s an emollient, and not a surfactant. What is it? -
That’s not a lot of water to dissolve parabens into - you may get a slurry instead of a solution.
-
I’ve found that when all other things are held equal, the lower the pH of the conditioner, the smoother the hair feels. I’d suggest a pH of 4 as the upper limit of your specification.
-
1) The easy way would be to add Titanium dioxide.
2) The smaller your oil phase droplets are, the whiter your emulsion will be. How can you improve your emulsion?3) You didn’t even mention an emulsifier - what are you using to keep this emulsion stable?4) You really need a stabilizer for the avobenzone. -
>How can I thicken the cream without using fatty acids or fatty alcohols?
Creams can be thickened in a number of ways. One of the easier ways is to increase the viscosity (thickness) of the creams outer, continuous phase. A thicker continuous phase also increases stability, by making it harder for the oil micelles to coalesce.You can use natural gums (xanthan, guar, locust bean, Gum Arabic, maybe the cellulosics) to thicken your water phase, or you can use mineral products (veegum, silica, etc.) I’m leaving out the polymeric and associative thickeners, since you can’t use those.>Is beeswax a fatty alcohol?Short answer: NoLonger answer: You really should look this up yourself, but…“An approximate chemical formula for beeswax is C15H31COOC30H61. Its main components are palmitate, palmitoleate, and oleate esters of long-chain (30-32 carbons) aliphatic alcohols, with the ratio of triacontanyl palmitate CH3(CH2)29O-CO-(CH2)14CH3 to cerotic acid CH3(CH2)24COOH, the two principal components, being 6:1″ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeswax “Fatty alcohols (or long-chain alcohols) are usually high-molecular-weight, straight-chain primary alcohols, but can also range from as few as 4-6 carbons to as many as 22-26, derived from natural fats and oils. The precise chain length varies with the source. Some commercially important fatty alcohols are lauryl, stearyl, and oleyl alcohols. They are colourless waxy solids, although impure samples may appear yellow. Fatty alcohols usually have an even number of carbon atoms and a single alcohol group (-OH) attached to the terminal carbon. Some are unsaturated and some are branched.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_alcohol” a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with a long aliphatic tail (chain), which is either saturated or unsaturated. Most naturally occurring fatty acids have a chain of an even number of carbon atoms, from 4 to 28.[1] Fatty acids are usually derived from triglycerides or phospholipids.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid>What about Prehydrated Gum Arabic?What about it? What do you need to know?>Can floral waxes be used?Why would you think they couldn’t be used? Specifically, what properties does the wax have that would lead you to suspect that it would not be appropriate for this use? Really, you can use anything you like that’s cosmetic grade. The question is what effects you’ll get. Adding waxes to an oil phase is one of the other ways of increasing viscosity. This method does not increase stability by much, if at all, which is why I didn’t suggest it first.>For example Rosa multiflora (rose) flower wax, witch is a solid creamy wax?Try it, see what happens. Enjoying experimentation and having a certain amount of inquisitiveness are key characteristics for a cosmetic chemist. If you don’t like to get in the lab and tinker, just to see what will happen, you will probably not be all that happy in your career. -
If you are making your own lipstick for your self, no testing is required. It’s probably not needed, either. Microbial growth requires water. If there’s no water in your lipstick, you won’t get any growth, so just a small bit of preservative will keep you safe.
-
Please allow me to point out that by far the vast majority of colored lip products use pigments rather than dyes, because dyes tend to stain the skin, sometimes to the point of needing to wear off. Pigments need to be very well dispersed to look even and not feel gritty.
Try looking around the web at various lip product formula’s. There is a trade off between long-lasting moisturizing and light-feeling elegance in lip products. You don’t get any moisturizing if the product does not stay on the lips. -
The complexity of this kind of study, and the amount of time it takes, is one of the main reasons why many professional cosmetic chemists have only one or two “favorite” emulsifier combinations. Once you develop a versatile system that works consistently, you tend to stick with it, and the more you use it, the faster you are able to optimize a formula with that system.
-
Perry has written extensively about the use of knock-out experiments to diagnose formulation problems.
There is another diagnostic step after knock-outs that has gotten less attention: Determining the Performance Envelope. (yes, I unabashedly stole that term from aviation)Think about a simple, 3-ingredient emulsion: Oil, water, emulsifier. We don’t really need to run a knock-out experiment to figure this out, but bear with me for a moment. After running a knock-out experiment, we now know that the oil and water won’t be stable without the emulsifier. We have decided that we want 20% oil in our emulsion (for aesthetic and/or performance reasons that have nothing to do with stability).This is the time when you could run a performance envelope study. By making a number of batches varying the ratio of water to emulsifier, you are testing to see where the minimum level of emulsifier is to keep the emulsion stable (at a given level of oil), where the maximum level of emulsifier is (sometimes determined by stability, sometimes by cost or aesthetics) and at least approximately where the optimum level of emulsifier is. You may not have complete results until after you let your series go through accelerated stability testing, though.This gets rapidly more complex the more ingredients you have to test. That’s why the running the knock-out series first is so critical - it lets you strip your formula down to the essential ingredients first. -
Have we connected on LinkedIn yet?