[Herbnerd]

@”Dr Catherine Pratt” Thanks for your suggestion. I’ve just had a 25 kg sack of Kaolin (Halloysite) clay dropped from a rep at Axieo.

I’ll update how I get on - I guess I will need to add more than I used for titanium dioxide.

Thanks again.

[Herbnerd]

@”Dr Catherine Pratt” A white clay such as kaolin? Or do you have a preferred white clay?

[Herbnerd]

That’s the problem with marketers and management - they want a lab to look like something out of the movies that they can show off to prospective clients and not something that looks, as @Duncan says, a glorified kitchen with some measuring equipment.
I’ve done a lot more with a lot less than people would think.  

[Herbnerd]

L-ascorbic acid is the true vitamin C. USP just refers to the United States Pharmacopoeia, the standard to which it is tested. Ascorbic acid, Ascorbic Acid USP, Ascorbic acid BP, L-Ascorbic acid (with or without BP/USP) is all the same thing.

D-ascorbic acid is often sold as Erythorbic acid. It’s much cheaper and tends to used in foods as an antioxidant.

[Herbnerd]

Google can be your worst enemy at times - its always hard to find the authoritative information and if you don’t know the names of the equipment to search for, you can search forever.

I’m not looking for cosmetic use - I tend to work in the dietary supplement industry and there seems to be a lot of interest in Liposomes in the industry at present. Since preparation is the same whether it is cosmetic or pharmaceutical…. I just thought I would ask.

[Herbnerd]

The company I work at has a sequential numbering system but not much else and it all somehow works.

In the previous database system, we had separate codes and separate areas for raw materials, packing materials, finished products etc.

The new ERP system doesn’t seem to differentiate that easily - all areas are in one page only. As long as you know what you are searching for and can isolate the data interrogation to the items you are after, it is fine.

[Herbnerd]

Happy Birthday, old chap.

4/4 is lucky for some, unless you are Chinese!

[Herbnerd]

@Bozchemist

Thanks for that. The Guar/Xanthan blend is a TIC gum product, which along with the Acacia gum, worked very well when making a stable emulsion.

Re Flavours being microemulsions (esp soda) yep - I did know that. I worked as a sales rep for a flavour house for a year. I sucked big time at sales and decided to go back to doing what I enjoy the most - being a lab rat!

Cheers

[Herbnerd]

@bobzchemist - I wish I had a like button for that! I will have to remember that.

[Herbnerd]

Thanks for your comments @bobzchemist.

Silica - I have to use this as part of the formulation anyway since the customer wants to make the Silica claim (about 47% Silica)  and that was why I was wondering whether I could use Silica to use a Pickering emulsion. I think the Silicon Dioxide we have at work is Aerosil (need to check the type) which is fumed silica (I believe, but happy to be corrected on this), and I like the idea of the Calcium Silicate.

I did do a nutritional emultion a year or two back using roughly 1/3rd Sugar, 1/3rd Oil, 1/3rd water using gum arabic 2%, and Guar/Xanthan blend at about 0.2% and this created a nice mayonaise like emulsion.

I guess I could try:

• Acacia gum 2%
• Guar/Xantham blend 0.2%
• Silica 3.5%
• Oil 2%
• Everything else QS to fill

I will let you know how I get on. Thanks for your thoughts

[Herbnerd]

The Ester-C that is often sold is a Calcium Ascorbate-Calcium Threonate complex bound with an ester bond between the two.

I think the original Ester C is under patent, but I think Monarch sells a version of the Calcium Ascorbate Calcium Threonate but unsure whether this is just a blend of Ascorbate and Threonate or whether this is actually ester-bonded.

I’ve only worked with this material in dietary supplements creating a chewable tablet so am unable to advise on the rest of your questions

[Herbnerd]

Regarding Stevia - you can source Rebaudoside A, which is much sweeter than Stevia alone and allows you to use less of it. Most of the stuff I have found is very fine - almost talc-like

in the USA, contact Cargil, if elsewhere in the world, contact Layn in China. They do some very nice product - and perhaps look at their Monk fruit/Reb A blends

[Herbnerd]

depending on how waxy it is, I would probably finely mill some high intensity sweeteners - Sucralose, Aspartame, Acesulfame Potassium (Ace-K), Stevia Thalin/Thaumatin etc and disperse throughout the lip-balm.

I have done flavoured fish oil softgels this way.

[Herbnerd]

It would probably be easier to use a protease and a low pH  to digest the proteins and release the vitamin C - but there is also the danger of the Ascorbic acid would oxide and disappear anyway.

[Herbnerd]

 I guess the best way would be to speak with the manufacturer to supply an assay method for protein encapsulated vitamin C. Most suppliers would supply this (well, in pharmaceutical fields at least).

However, I have my doubts - it doesn’t add up to me.

[Herbnerd]

Probably look at a high-school chemistry text book and remove anything you don’t feel is important for cosmetic chemistry might be the easiest place to start.

[Herbnerd]

Most of the verbosity surrounding logo redevelopment is really just marketing masturbation.

The logo looks fine, but CEO’s explanation of it is utterly meaningless. It has been written by marketing consultants to sell a re-developed logo to an idiotic CEO who then parrots it out to the general public as it the words actually mean something. A touch of the Emperor’s new clothes perhaps?

[Herbnerd]

If it is a fractionated coconut oil why not consider using a hydrogenated coconut oil?
Depending on the amount used, you should be able to retain some clarity.

In the course of my work, I have to do this sort of thing a lot - but clarity has never been an issue. We tend to use GMS, Beeswax, hydrogenated oils and the like.

[Herbnerd]

I can comment on the botanical part only.

The botanical extracts, such as Aloe, come as extract ratios. Aloe is a 200:1 extract, meaning that 1 g of the powder is equivalent to 200 g of the fresh inner leaf gel.

It doesn’t take a lot of maths to work out that in a 200 mL bottle, you could have 1 g of active and still be able to claim 100% activity!

[Herbnerd]

@pma - I read something about this a few months back. Using polyphase emulsions to stabilise vitamins in food.

Can’t quite remember the reason why they were doing this in foods though.

[Herbnerd]

You can get Sucrose BP, EP, USP/NF (Pharmaceutical grade not cosmetic
grade) - but as @Alchemist and @Duncan says, you will be charged a
premium for it and you would be better buying from the local cash and
carry store - unless of course, you do need Pharmaceutical grade for
some reason.

[Herbnerd]

In a previous life, I worked for a company supplying food products to supermarkets. Much of what was bought wasn’t so much because customer demand, but more by what supermarkets telling customers what they sell and then telling the manufacturers what the ‘customer wants’. Often the two are totally different.

I have seen similar trends in the dietary supplement industry - the manufacturers tell customers what they want - unless perhaps the miracle ingredient was featured on Dr Phil - and then everything is reactionary (I have seen products on the shelf within 2 weeks of Dr Phil shows).

I guess it is the same with cosmetic industry.

Trouble is, there is so much misinformation out there and if anyone mentions “Cancer” associated with any ingredient, whether proven or not, there is pressure against that ingredient.

[Herbnerd]

It is my understanding that antioxidants are almost sacrificial in their nature because they will reduce a number of other chemicals. They do this in the body - and this is why Vitamin C is hard to stabilise in an aqueous solution.

[Herbnerd]

Welcome back Perry, good to see this site running again, although it was a shame to have lost such a repository of information on some of those old threads.

I’m Rob Martin, a formulation chemist for the natural health industry, specialising in hardshell capsules, softgels, nutritional powders, tablets and the like.
I am currently studying Cosmetic Science to add those range of skills to my portfolio.

[Herbnerd]

Hi Perry,

I think I may not have been clear. We knew the preservation system was fine - that had been tested using preservative efficacy tests and 3 month accelerated stability to give 9 month shelf-life before the product went on sale. There has been on-going accelerated stability with each batch to ensure we can push this out to 36 months safely.

We were tweaking the vitamin C levels based on the claims to ensure it could be assayed to the claim levels. This is normal practice under TGA (Australia) to conduct on-going stability to ensure compliance.

I cannot comment on the US dietary supplement industry. There are different regulations to be dealt with.

Under Australian Dietary Supplements regulations, they come under the same regs as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics and compliance is defined in law.