[Gunther]

Please post the complete formula and procedure so you can actually get some help.

[Gunther]

Hold usually comes from PVP or PVP/VA polymers.
Oils don’t provide much hold and leave hair, well, oily.

You may wish to switch to an ready-made, all-included emulsifier, as too much PS20/80 will leave hair sticky.

Is PEG-7 = PEG-7 glyceryl cocoate?
That will leave an oily hair too. OTOH it’s water soluble so no emulsifier is needed for that.

Why don’t you hadd silicones for smoothness, shine and some mild extra hold?

[Gunther]

Ahmad said:

Hello everyone,
can somebody tell me that i can use methyl alcohol less than 1% in a dish wash liquid?

Even if regulations allow it, don’t
there are more effective and safer preservatives out there.
Customers may sue you, and you or some of your employees may end up very ill just from chronic exposure to it.

[Gunther]

You can’t get a clear product out of LABSA + NaOH as the resulting sulfonate is yellow colored.
For a crystal clear formulation you’d need a shampoo-like formula:
SLES+SLS, CAPB and alkanolamide

[Gunther]

Great to see you back.

[Gunther]

First, you need to determine if it’s the preservative or the emulsion that is failing.
It looks like it’s the latter, but only further testing can confirm that.
i.e. you may make an identical formula with lots of “high power” preservatives (i.e. parabens) and see if it still fails.
Then you can switch to using more/different emulsifiers and see if it works.

[Gunther]

Make sure you have a battery backup system in case of blackouts. You don’t want to wait another 13 days or so.

Quantity depends on workload and if different temps are needed. If all samples are kept at 40 C, then you can do fine with just an oven, provided dates are stated in their labels/tags.

[Gunther]

Thanks, I ask because I read this post

For instance, L-Arginine appears to be a nice neutralizer for Carbopols giving the final products very pleasant sensorial feeling and additional conditioning effect especially in nail and hair formulations.
https://chemistscorner.com/cosmeticsciencetalk/discussion/comment/5548#Comment_5548

Generic arginine is quite cheap, albeit not as cheap as Triethanolamine, you use little of it.
My only problem is to find arginine free amino acid, and not arginine HCl.

[Gunther]

ngarayeva001 said:

Why decyl glucoside? It has high pH. Isn’t CAPB a better and milder option? CAPB and Olefin Sulfonate are available on the DIY market.

Also, a high glucoside, low CAPB formulation I made (for a human handwash) leaves a sticky afterfeel.
That doesn’t happen with high CAPB, low glucoside.

[Gunther]

Magnesium stearate is used as a mold and pharmaceutical lubricant and leaves a powdery afterfeel. Of course too much of it will leave a clumpy, whitish residue.
You can purchase a pound or Kg of it for a couple $, and see how it feels.

The real challenge is that it won’t dissolve in water, so it needs to be suspended.

[Gunther]

For the same amount of LABSA (preferably <20% in the final formulation)
try neutralizing it with both NaOH and Sodium carbonate (in proper proportions to each other, so Google LABSA, NaOH and Sodium carbonate molecular weights)

I got a feeling that the strongly alkaline NaOH degrades LABSA, unlike the milder carbonate.

[Gunther]

About the only truly “natural” soaps
are vegetable oils (found in nature) saponified with Sodium or Potassium hydroxide (man made).
But the results will be awful and pH way too high, which would be irritating for dogs.

[Gunther]

Is that 30% total LABSA in your finished formulation?
If so, this is too high a concentration.

Also, 30% LABSA doesn’t need 30% total NaOH to neutralize
search for LABSA and NaOH molecular weights, to get the relative proportions to each other.

[Gunther]

Magnesium stearate?
It is used as a lubricant and demolding aid.

[Gunther]

agagag said:

I’ve got another question. I made neutralisation and after night I get product with pH 8. But my sample delaminate…On the top my pH is 8, and on the bottom pH is 12. Should I change the quantity of NaOH…?

What’s LABSA concentration?
Some low grade LABSA have trouble getting past 15%.

Also, you can try neutralizing it with Sodium carbonate (Soda ash) instead of NaOH to see if it works.

[Gunther]

I second what Belassi said
try a different, milder commercial liquid/gel shampoo without SLS/SLES and see if it works.

[Gunther]

Some commercial, low-irritancy dishwash blends are pretty much shampoo-like.
They aren’t as good as cutting grease as sulfonate formulations, but they can be used without wearing gloves

IMO 
you can try SLES+SLS, Dawn dishwash has it
Cocamide DEA leaves a sticky afterfeel. CMEA might do as well.
CAPB may reduce irritancy better than CDEA/MEA does, and costs about the same.

[Gunther]

Perry said:

For a leave-in product it doesn’t matter as much that the ingredient is cationic or not.  Plus Cetrimonium Chloride has been deemed not safe in leave-in products above 0.25%.  

Cationic ingredient safety 

Polyquat 7 may help, but for leave-in, detangling products Silicones are where it’s at. Cyclomethicone, Amodimethicone, Dimethiconol, etc.

@Perry  does cyclomethicone help detangling, given that it quickly evaporates?

[Gunther]

To lower costs, you can also get cheap, generic cyclomethicone (usually made in China), instead of water.

[Gunther]

You can try
a polysorbate, PEG-40 hydrogentated castor oil and combinations of them.
You could try an ethoxylated alcohol for tiny amounts of fragrance, but for 6% fragrance, you’d need to use too much.

PEG-7 glyceryl cocoate might work but you’d need too much of it which will leave a sticky feel.

[Gunther]

I wonder if stearic acid may end up flaking off from hair.
Coconut oil is proven to get absorbed in hair, and more of a buzzword than stearic acid.

You need to check if coconut oil or beeswax separate from petrolatum. If they do you may need something like C12-15 alkyl benzoate.

[Gunther]

CarbopolUltrez said:

Thank you everyone for your comments and advice.  To clarify my point @DavidW and @MarkBroussard, one week is usually not enough time to source and receive all the raw materials we need. Customers are of course always requesting new and exotic actives to support their marketing concepts and introducing more regulatory restrictions for raw materials. I often feel there is not enough time to really evaluate stability, and when you’re on a compressed timeline any stability or regulatory issue that pops up close to the production date can really derail the project.  

For now I will appreciate getting to touch a lot of different formulas and products.

If you ain’t doing stability testing, make sure you have “as is” acceptance contracts.

[Gunther]

Cyclomethicone is volatile. It may help faster drying, but nothing remains on the hair.

Dimethiconol is not water soluble. At least not the one I bought.
IMO It leaves more of a wet-hair look than dimethicone does.

[Gunther]

Do essential oils fully dissolve in jojoba oil?
If it does, then jojoba oil already works like a fixative, delaying the volatile “notes” in EO from evaporating too fast.

You can try a fixative. Some like triethyl citrate and benzyl benzoate are widely available and cheap.
Some pro perfumers don’t use fixatives in some fomulas as they dampen the smell. They just use the heavier oily components as fixatives.
So, also try with no jojoba oil and just EO+emulsifier. Jojoba oil may be “over fixating” it (dampening its smell).

You may have weak or dilute EOs. 
Some EOs have a faint smell by themselves.
Try adding more EOs as needed.

[Gunther]

1 Neutralized LABSA always seems to have a faint yellow tint. So it can’t be crystal clear. You can use a SLS + SLES shampoo like formula, if you want it to be clear (and milder on the skin).

2 To thicken it you
2.1 can add more LABSA + NaOH
2.2 more SLES
2.3 conduct a salt curve analysis to make sure you ain’t adding more salt than needed, which makes it thinner.
2.4 add an alkanolamide

3.1 Buy a ready made, water soluble fragrance
3.2 use PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil and/or a polysorbate to solubilize fragrance

4 add a preservative, as @chemicalmatt just mentioned.