Camel
Forum Replies Created
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There are several issues with your current formula. Here are my recommendations:
1. If this is supposed to be a hair conditioner, you are missing key conditioning agents. Oils can add shine to the hair, but only a small amount is needed. They do not condition the hair on their own. You want to look at cationic ingredients like BTMS (Behentrimonium Methosulfate) and cationic guar gum (Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride)
2. The high percentage of honey (70%) is making your mixture sticky. Honey is inherently sticky and not suitable for a hair conditioner in such a large amount. I recommend removing honey entirely and replacing it with water. Food grade ingredients aren’t suitable for cosmetics, and honey isn’t going to provide a benefit in your conditioner either.
3. Oils are not soluble in honey or aloe vera juice, which is causing the separation and bubbling issues you’re seeing. Adding more oil or aloe vera juice exacerbates this problem. To make the oil mix with the water phase, you need a robust emulsifier. For a conditioner, a cationic emulsifier like BTMS (Behentrimonium Methosulfate) is preferable, combined with fatty alcohols like cetearyl alcohol for improved stability and conditioning performance.
4. I would recommend reducing the olive oil, castor oil, and aloe vera to around 1% each. Only a little amount of oil is needed in a conditioner, otherwise it can become too heavy and weigh the hair down. Also, aloe vera does not provide much benefit either, it is mostly an ingredient used for claims and marketing stories. You might consider adding some silicones like dimethicone, too.
Good luck!
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You might take a look at these:
FDA: Is It a Cosmetic, a Drug, or Both? (Or Is It Soap?)
FDA: Warning Letters Address Drug Claims Made for Products Marketed as Cosmetics
FDA: How can I tell if my product is a cosmetic, a drug, or both?
For example, acne treatments, dandruff treatments, and skin protectants are regulated as drugs. A cleanser that is also an acne treatment… is regulated as a combination drug-cosmetic… Products that are both drugs and cosmetics must meet the requirements for both categories.
The FD&C Act defines drugs, in part, by their intended use, as “articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease” and “articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals” [FD&C Act, sec. 201(g)(1)].
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Hi @Yolise
A few things for you to consider:
- Xanthan Gum is an anionic (negatively charged) thickening agent; it is incompatible with cationic (positively charged) ingredients like BTMS, so you will need to remove it or replace it with either a nonionic alternative like Hydroxyethylcellulose (HEC) or a cationic alternative like Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride (Cationic Guar Gum).
- The aloe vera juice concentration is very high and will likely cause stability issues with your formula. Aloe vera is primarily used as a claims ingredient; it does not have much benefit to the skin or hair, if at all. I would recommend replacing it with distilled water.
- You don’t really need a high concentration of oils, especially for a leave-in product. The conditioning is going to come from the BTMS and dimethicone; the oils and butter may add some shine to the hair, but too much will cause the heavy, oily feeling you mentioned. Try to reduce the total lipids to ~3%; perhaps 1% of each, but play around with different concentrations and see what your hair likes the best.
- You will probably get the same performance without the dl-panthenol and save yourself some time and money by removing it.
- The concentration of BTMS seems a bit high for a leave-in product, but my experience is limited.
Good luck!
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There is not really any benefit to adding tocopheryl acetate, but you could add some kokum butter as an emollient if you like how it feels on your skin. It might also function as a minor occlusive to help seal in moisture. If you do add it, you could also add some mixed tocopherols (~0.1%) to work as an antioxidant, but if you’re only using a small amount (~1%) it might not be necessary.
The choice of emulsifier largely depends on the haptics you are going for; test each one and see which one produces your favorite skin-feel. Olivem 1000 is a great choice in my opinion, and it is used by Neutrogena and Aveeno in their gel-creams for face and body. BTMS is used by CeraVe in their face and body lotions, so they are all viable options. If you continue with Olivem 1000 in your formula, you could try reducing the amount to ~2%. I have found lower amounts to work with small oil and silicone phases, as long as you have your co-emulsifier/stabilizers in place. It might help to reduce the waxy feeling you can sometimes get from these emulsifiers. You can also try adding it to your water phase to reduce this feeling and mitigate some of the soaping effect it is known to produce (although the dimethicone in your formula is probably already accomplishing this).
Good luck!
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You didn’t mention a specific problem, so I’m going to assume you are just looking for critiques or suggestions. Glycerin is generally considered unnecessary in a cleanser, but if you want to keep it in there, I would recommend reducing it to around 0.5%; 10% is quite a lot and it will most likely impair your foam performance. You might also consider reducing the total active surfactant matter of the formula if gentleness is your primary goal, and I don’t think you will need that much Polysorbate-20 to solubilize your fragrance. Try cutting the amount in half; using around 2-2.5% should give you a 1:4 or 1:5 ratio with the fragrance, which is the typical recommendation for this solubilizer. Finally, you might want to consider a more robust preservative system. Adding some Ethylhexylglycerin would be a good boost, but Phenoxyethanol is not a broad-spectrum preservative on its own, as it has limited activity against yeast and mold. Good luck!
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Hi Phil,
There is a lot going on in this formula and I would recommend rethinking it. Glycerin is generally considered to be unnecessary in cleansers and can even impair foam. The aloe vera powder and dl-panthenol are likely serving no purpose and simply getting rinsed down the drain. The oils are also unnecessary; the purpose of a cleanser is to remove oil (as well as dirt and sweat), so when you add oil to a shampoo, you are making it harder for the shampoo to do its job. More importantly, the oils are probably what is causing the separation you are experiencing, as they can have a major impact on stability.
With so many ingredients, it can be hard to tell what exactly the problem is, because there are multiple variables to consider. I would suggest removing everything from the formula except the surfactants and preservative, and then add each ingredient back one iteration at a time until you discover which one is causing the problem. Start with something like this first, and if no separation occurs, make another batch with the polyquaternium-10 and see if it remains stable:
- Water
- Sodium Lauroyl Isethionate
- Decyl Glucoside
- Cocamidopropyl Hydroxysultaine
- Glucose Sorb (Sorbeth-230 tetraoleate, decyl glucoside, sorbitan laurate)
- Optiphen Plus
- Citric Acid
Finally, your preservative is probably not sufficient, and you should also add a chelating agent (like disodium EDTA or tetrasodium glutamate diacetate). Keep in mind I am not a professional.
Good luck!
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Yes, it is a surfactant blend, with coco-glucoside being the primary one, and glyceryl oleate functioning as a re-fatting agent. The active matter is the dry content which is around 64-68% (hence the 65 in the name).
Good luck!
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You don’t necessarily need to reduce the water phase significantly to make an emulsified body butter. What you are essentially wanting to do is make a thicker version of your lotion. You can achieve this by adding some cetearyl alcohol to your formula which will increase the viscosity. You can additionally increase the siligel to 0.3%.
I’m not sure about the emulsifier you are using as I have never worked with it, but the most commonly used one in commercial body butters appears to be Glyceryl Stearate (and) PEG-100 Stearate. It is very easy to find and relatively inexpensive. It won’t thicken your formula, but it will emulsify it and then you can control the viscosity through a combination of cetearyl alcohol and a water gellant (in your case, siligel).
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You could try Olivem® 2020 at a 1:3 ratio with Olivem® 300. I’ve found this to have a great skin-feel in my opinion.
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You will want to take your advice from an expert like @PhilGeis but my guess is that using a preservative like phenoxyethanol (and) ethylhexylglycerin in combination with alcohol could be sufficient for a room spray since the formula is relatively simple. I am not sure about VOC requirements.
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@Perry44 I think the document preview is only showing the first page, but if you download the file, there are two more pages which show the formulations and questions. I’m attaching a screenshot if you would like to review them.
@DanielleNel I am not a chemist, so I cannot answer these questions, but I will take a guess.
The top layers of both formulas are opaque/hazy because the dimethicone was not properly suspended and/or the fragrance was not properly solubilized. The formulas are not using a water-soluble dimethicone and there doesn’t appear to be anything that would keep it suspended, so I imagine that is the viscous, oily texture forming at the top.
The pearlescent mica is likely settling at the bottom of the shampoo for the same reason—there is nothing keeping it suspended and/or the viscosity is not high enough to do so. Adding hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC), as Perry suggested, will likely solve this issue. It can keep the mica suspended while also increasing the stability and foam.
The foam is likely impaired by the dimethicone, as silicones can suppress foam, but the high fragrance load (1%) may also play a role here. I am usually using around 0.3% fragrance in a shampoo.
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You would need to do the calculations and place them at the various percentage points.
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@chemicalmatt Thank you so much for clarifying! Yes, BTMS was doing fine on its own with the silicone. I was more interested in seeing if I could replace it to simplify the formula, but I am using both now for the increase in viscosity the PQ-37 is providing.
Just to be sure, are you referring to Polyquaternium-80 or Quaternium-80? I am seeing PQ-80 pull up as a different product in my search, but the one I am referring to is Quaternium-80 (the cationic silicone polymer). Would this change your statement?
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@ketchito Thank you! I took your advice and kept the BTMS while adding PQ-37 at 0.4% and was able to achieve the thickness in the end-product I was aiming for without making the water too thick to work with.
I also tested the Quaternium-80 at 0.2% active in my shampoo; it’s looking good, but I can’t necessarily say I notice a difference vs. the version with PQ-10, although I’m not particularly great at observing these things.
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Yes, you can mix triethyl citrate and benzyl benzoate with fragrance oil.
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@Perry44 Thank you so much! There aren’t many discussions on the forum about this ingredient. I didn’t realize it was so effective at such a low level; I was trialing 0.5% PQ-37 with 0.5% active BTMS and 1% dimethicone for a leave-in.
If I omit the BTMS, do you think the PQ-37 and some cetearyl alcohol would be able to keep the dimethicone bonded? The only other components are preservative, fragrance, and HEC.
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@Perry44 Could I ask why you believe Polyquaternium-37 would be better than BTMS for a leave-on application? Is there any benefit to using both? Thank you!
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You could add Cola®Teric CBS (Cocamidopropyl Hydroxysultaine). It is already a component of the Suga®Det Mild blend, so it would be very fitting. Another addition could be Suga®Det C (Coco-Glucoside), so you would have an anionic, amphoteric, and nonionic surfactant in your formula. It’s used in baby shampoos by Aveeno, Johnson’s, Pipette, and others.
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@Perry44 You’re right that the baby cream is an OTC which has much stricter standards. I must have missed that as I was quickly scanning through the ingredient lists of several products! Thank you for your response.
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@PhilGeis Thank you for responding! These products are packaged in pump bottles, but as Perry noted, the baby cream is actually an OTC dimethicone skin protectant. The gel-cream is not. How much glycerin would you speculate they are including/would generally need to be included to have a significant impact on Aw? I would imagine a high amount would lead to a sticky feeling, but the gel-cream has a rather pleasant skin-feel.
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@evchem2 Thank you for the response! Yes, you are likely right that they contain minimal amounts of oat and aloe. However, some of their products do contain 2% colloidal oat, although as Perry mentioned, these are produced in an OTC factory, so it’s going to be much cleaner than your standard production.
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Thank you so much, @chemicalmatt ! Personally, I did not have any issues with stinging at 0.5%, but the menthol odor was quite pungent, so I’m not sure how much more I would be willing to increase it before the scent becomes overwhelming. I may test it just to find out. I was hoping the fragrance would mask it a little more, but that didn’t appear to be the case.
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Thank you!
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@ketchito How does Tetrasodium Glutamate Diacetate (GLDA) compare to the two?
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Thank you so much. I’ve ordered many things from their shop before so I do trust them, but for some reason I wasn’t seeing any relevant results in my search, and my Prospector account was unexpectedly deactivated. ????