[Gunther]

Ahmad said:

Hello,
what is that slimy slow moving property in liquid dish wash of max?
i trued to increase surfactant and tried to enhance its thickness but still did not get that kinda result.
Is there any kind of slimy product like glue or else is used in it? 

Max? Is that a brand?
What are their ingredients?

[Gunther]

I seem to recall that GMS destabilizes cationic emulsions, even if it’s not the SE grade.

[Gunther]

myraqureshi said:

a year and half later we have found that after a year, it turns brown.  

Was the product marketed without a previous challenge test?

Try making a test formulation preserved with high levels of parabens to see if the brown thing is the preservative failing, or actually oxidation or degradation.

[Gunther]

Plastic or glass doesn’t (usually) feed bacteria
so even spraying or rinsing them with 70% alcohol and allow to evaporate can reduce most viable bacteria (albeit it may not work with enveloped viruses)
Repeat for additional effectiveness.

Hydrogen peroxide works too, but takes longer to fully evaporate.
You’d need some microbiological testing to see which one do you need.

Simple washing gets rid of most bacteria and viruses though.

[Gunther]

You can find some very old school vanishing cream recipes here
http://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/aba/vanishing-cream.php
but they are really old school and it shows.

[Gunther]

Oils won’t do anything useful in a shampoo
and they will reduce foam, cleansing ability and viscosity.

If you must add oils for marketing purposes, add them in claim ingredient levels 0.01% or so.

You can try synthetic “water soluble oils” like PEG-7 glyceryl cocoate to see if you like them, although it also reduces foam and viscosity a bit, but nowhere near as bad as vegetable oils do.

[Gunther]

BTMSs contain fatty alcohols, so maybe they are needed for the emulsion to remain stable?

Are you using Cetrimonium chloride or Behentrimonium chloride?
I know for a fact that the former doesn’t work well as an emulsifier unless a fatty alcohol (preferably cetearyl alcohol) is added as coemulsifier.

[Gunther]

Fatty alcohols are usually preferred to fatty acids for skin creams
please read
https://chemistscorner.com/cosmeticsciencetalk/discussion/5721/why-so-many-modern-creams-contain-fatty-alcohols-instead-of-the-usual-stearic-acid

[Gunther]

My opinion is that even if the FDA were to ban non GRAS ingredients in sunscreens (unlikely)
companies will legally challenge that (taking it to the Supreme Court if needed) as you can sell anything as long as it ain’t PROVEN to be harmful.

Insufficient data is no reason for banning ingredients.

[Gunther]

smok said:

Gunther said:

myatmyat said:

which are the best formula for transparent dis wash liquid soap?

A shampoo-like SLES+SLS+CAPB formulation will work fine and it’s (mostly) non-irritating, but it doesn’t cut grease as well as sulfonates do.

You can add some ethoxylated fatty alcohol to the above formulation in order to improve grease cutting, while remaining clear.

why all company’s use silfonates  and the product is very transparent

Do you have a picture or a commercial, sulfonate based formulation that is actually transparent?
Please also post a pic of the label so we can see that it actually contains sulfonates.

[Gunther]

Quimico said:

Mel55 What is the concentration of SLES?
A regular Shampoo; For 100 kg
1. GLYCERIN  1
2. SLES 70%   16
3. DEA              2
4. BETAINE39% 6
5. EDTA       1
6. SALT        4-5
7. PERFUME  0.15
you will get almost shower gel

1% EDTA is way too much. 0.1% is enough.

4-5% salt will make it thinner.

2% Cocamide DEA will likely leave a sticky afterfeel.

[Gunther]

Mel55 said:

Hello,
I have been struggling to make a mild shampoo, particularly getting it to the right viscosity.  I make a simple clarifying shampoo that I really like but as I live in a hot climate, I often need to wash my hair every day and would like something a little milder.  It is only for my person use.  This is the formula for the clarifying shampoo.  Does anyone have any advice on the best way to make this a mild/everyday product? 

68.5                 Water

15                    SLeS

10                    Coco Betaine

0.5                   Preservative

6                      Salt

Citric acid as required

One of the ingredients I have tried to add is glycol distearate, but no matter how I attempt to melt it (separately, with other surfactants or as part of the water phase) it always crystalises on the top of the solution as it cools.  I’m not sure if anyone has any idea what I am doing wrong.

Thanks,
Mel.

Is that 15% active SLES?
15% as supplied SLES? @30%? @70%

The lowest active SLES concentration that still thickens with betaine or salt is about 8%, according to my experiments

Is that 10% active coco betaine?
10 % as-supplied coco betaine?

6% salt is way too much and will make it thinner. Add salt in small increments like 0.10 or 0.25% to get the desired viscosity and preferably do a salt curve experiment.

Forget about bare glycol distereate and get a ready-made, commercial pearlizer blend.

[Gunther]

Glucosides leave a sticky afterfeel even in rinse off formulations
The stickiness will become worse in leave on applications.

[Gunther]

First see if the fragrance dissolves fine in alcohol with no solubilizers like IPM or DPG.

Second see if your fragrance lasts too short a time
so your formula may benefit from a fixative
but don’t expect fixatives to do miracles
at most fixatives may extend fragrance “life” 1.5x. Consider yourself very very lucky with 2x.
Fixatives just won’t make cheap copycat fragrances last anything like top perfumes with expensive base notes.
Fixatives deaden fragrances, so you’ll need more overall fragrance levels for the same result.

Third. Fixative mixtures work better than single ones.
Read:

Tenacity and Fixing of Aromatic Chemicals

By WOLFGANGSTURM and GERD MANSFEIJJ

Hammann & Reimer GmbH
(stay away from potentially toxic fixatives like phtalates or coumarin.

Fourth
Surf a fragrance specific website like basenotes.com

Fifth
Regarding alcohol, please check your local regulations
but also read
http://www.dermaviduals.com/english/publications/ingredients/denatured-use-pure-alcohol.html

[Gunther]

Natural substances like some essential oils degrade themselves rather quickly.

Oils with unsaturated carbon bonds seem to degrade faster.
You may need to add an antioxidant (although oxidation ain’t their only degradation reaction).

Some fragrance oils lose scent after just a few months so some need recall old stock from shelves, add more oils and put back in the market (not as easy as it sounds).

[Gunther]

1. Higher concentrations of (neutralized) LABSA + SLES increase foam.
You can also add some Cocamidopropylbetaine, Cocamide DEA or some alkanolamide for both thickening and foam improving.

2. Foam is undesirable for machine washing.
IMO Propylene glycol is the easiest to find and cheapest defoamer. You can try some propietary silicone based defoamers too.
Also, remove SLES as it doesn’t clean well and foams too much.
I don’t know how much defoamers you’d need to call them HE.

3. Read above

4. Wol detergent? What’s that?
You can add a bit less NaOH to neutralize LABSA so it has pH 7.

I don’t think Sodium sulfate serves any purpose in the formula, so remove it.
Sodium carbonate will generate carbon dioxide thus lots of foam that will take hours or days to dissipate, on contact with LABSA. So you’d better neutralize LABSA with NaOH.

You’d need at least some 10% LABSA
SLES is too low too.
Why SLES granules if you already have SLES? 

[Gunther]

Aziz said:

Avocado oil has a very good nourishin and moisturising properties . Using in my face cream/wash along with vitamin E oils . Adding it as an aesthetic and story also . 

Oils won’t have any nourishing or moisturizing properties in a rinse off product, and they will reduce surfactant cleaning abilities.

Drop EOs to fragrance levels
or better yet, reduce EOs to claim levels and use a synthetic fragrance, if your marketing story allows it.

[Gunther]

MayDay1988 said:

@Gunther if I get rid of sodium stearate, what do I use to form the bar then? Thank you for your help.

@ngarayeva001 thank you!

Some synthetic surfactants can harden the bar on their own,
but you’d better check swiftcraftymonkey (paid) website for in depth details.

[Gunther]

I have only used neutralized LABSA,
the NaOH % will vary a bit from supplier to supplier and even from batch to batch.
I rarely use NaOH as it’s alkalinity seems to degrade LABSA. Now I use Sodium carbonate and wait for the bubbles to dissipate.

Sodium alkyl benzene sulfonate should be a pale transparent yellow, no matter if it’s neutralized with NaOH or carbonate.
And yes, it cleans clothes fine on its own.

[Gunther]

@Fekher why not just use a proven emulsifier like BTMS or CETAC+cetearyl alcohol?
Not only they’re proven to emulsify silicones, they also condition hair.

[Gunther]

And get rid of Sodium stearate and all soaps, they will always have a high pH.

[Gunther]

(i) some extracts are as simple as soaking the powdered ground plants in a solvent and let it sit for a while. Others need expensive vacuum distillation to prevent heat from damagin the active compounds.

(ii) You can’t know the exact concentration
not even if extracted it yourself
time, temperature, solvent and process choice all them can vary extract concentration (and even composition)
and so do unscrupulous sellers who water down their extracts.

You’d need chromatography equipment to find out.
Some paper chromatography kits are very cheap in Ebay and can help you get a rough estimate.

(iii) I don’t even know if extracts are actually regulated anywhere in the world, other than false advertising policies.

[Gunther]

If your final pH ain’t too acidic, you won’t have any (or just very little) free citric acid left, as all of it will be used up to neutralize whatever is making the Sodium ascorbyl phosphate alkaline.
All (or most) citric acid will react to become a much milder citrate salt.

[Gunther]

This is too specific and specialized a field so college or universities won’t teach much about cosmetics.

We rarely react chemicals, we mostly mix compounds hoping they don’t cross-react, and feel good on the skin or hair. Nobody really knows exactly how these chemicals interact with hair or skin at the molecular or cellular level.

In my opinion your best option is to get the swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com paid subscription for the basics, and Google some related chemistry lessons yourself.

[Gunther]

The problem is that lowering pH causes the soap to revert to the free fatty acid.

Na-CH2-(CH2)n-CH3 (Sodium soap)  +  C6H8O7 (citric acid)  —>  H-CH2-(CH2)n-CH3 (free fatty acid)  +   Na3-C6H5O7 (Sodium citrate)

As you know free fatty acids aren’t soluble in water, nor they clean as soaps do.
For lower pH levels, you’d need synthetic surfactants because they don’t decompose.
Sulfates, sulfonates, sarcosinates, isethionates cling to the Sodium atom “tighter” than soaps do. And in nonionic surfactants there’s no Sodium (or Potassium) atom to be lost.
Hope this helps.