johnb
Forum Replies Created
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I don’t want to appear unhelpful but you really should get some background knowledge and information of what you are trying to achieve and about the ingredients you are using.
The natural ingredients like that may be OK for an extemporaneously prepared shampoo but I would never formulate anything remotely resemling that if it were to be stored for more than a day or so.
As you suggest, there will be a lot more going on in your mix than merely microorganism infection.
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PEG7 glyceryl cocoate will tend to increase the viscosity, also to me, it seems something of an overdose in the presence of 10% propanediol.
Can you define the trade name of the Sodium cocoyl amino
acids that you are using? (My aim here is to possibly suggest lowering the quantity of this item, not to change the brand). -
What are you saying is the function of the linseed, honey and lemon juice in your shampoo?
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May be sulfate free but it is not sulfonate free. Is there a arguably important difference between the two, other than marketing departments?
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If you want more information on the perfume formulation acting a a stabiliser for the product, I suggest you work in cooperation with your perfume house. It’s not just a case of picking a suitable smell from the shelves and hoping for the best. It depends greatly on the detergents present, the ratio of the detergents, the grade of calcite in the mix.
As you seem totally new to this product, can I suggest you carry out some experimental work with mixtures of sodium laurate, an amine oxide detergent and a suitable abrasive powder (100 mesh calcite in Jif/Cif) You can make the sodium laurate by saponifying coconut oil with sodium hydroxide.
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My view is that the most important aspect here is being put on one side:
“Does it work?“
I have seen the hair that grows as a side effect of treatment with Minoxidil for its intended use (hypertension).
I ain’t beard hair by any means - more like the fluff on a baby’s bum. Worst thing is, it falls out when the treatment stops. -
I am very surprised that potentially powerful drugs such as these are used for this purpose.
You state these can be bought “without any prescription from a medical practitioner”. Well, whether with a prescription or not, that puts them outside the field of being cosmetics.
I have just made a quick Google of these two materials in a mixture - most of the previously available products are discontinued or reformulated. I doubt there is any chance that rules will be relaxed in EU or USA.
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I am confused as to what effect are you expecting the DHA to have.
What do you mean by “It does work as a dimmer in its powder form but its just not as affective.”
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I never expected hydroquinone and tretinoin to appear in the same sentence as astringent.
Can you clarify? As far as I am aware, hydroquinone is used as a skin bleaching agent (banned in a number of countries) and tretinoin is a drug for the treatment of acne.
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Certain soap products, example shaving cream, do improve on standing for a period of time. This is sometimes called “rotting” (it is not a rotting process at all but a re-crystallisation of excess fatty acids in the cream to form platelet crystals which give a pearly sheen to the product).
Alterations to the processing conditions and fine tuning of the formulation can speed this up. Addition of an anionic surfactant can cut down maturation time.
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The following comments apply only to the early type soap/amine oxide formulations.
Certain combinations of soaps (alkali metal monocarboxylates e.g sodium laurate) and amine oxide surfactants e.g lauryldimethylamine oxide) can form gel-like complexes. These gels are “strengthened” by certain terpenes to form structured liquids with greatly enhanced suspending power.
Terpenes are components of numerous essential oils and therefore fragrances. some combinations of terpenes have greater structuring properties than others and it is these that are used in stabilising thstypes of calcite cream cleaner.
I am not willing to disclose the perfume or terpene combinations used*. A reputable and knowledgeable perfume house should be able to help in this.
The above may not apply at all in the formulations offered by raw materials suppliers trying to sell their viscosity modifying products.
*Not even for a fee.
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It is a prime philosophy of manufacturing to pre-sell or sell products as soon as practical following the manufacture. Goods in storage is directly proportional to money tied up doing nothing - which few companies can afford and if they can, there is something very wrong with the way that the company is being run.
The in/out at top speed system reached its extreme in the1980’s (ish) when it was all the rage to adopt the JIT method of manufacture (JIT = Just In Time) where raw materials were bought in at the last possible moment, in the precise quantity needed, processed and despatched as quickly as possible. Obviously this required very close cooperation between all parties and it soon fell into disfavour as, all too frequently, JIT turned into TFL (Too F*****g Late).
So, if you have spare space then rent it out and make money rather than stuffing it with unsold product. Remember also that unsold goods in storage are exactly equal to money going down the drain.
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Ozone is a very unstable compound and quickly decomposes back to its original oxygen. In the presence of organic matter, ozone can form explosive ozonides. It also has a strong “electrical” odour - mainly due to our association with the electric sparks forming ozone.
I also doubt it would pass health and safety requirements.
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This is the first time you have revealed that you have a stock of the material. I may have been more sympathetic to your circumstances if I had known that and a tortuous thread may have been much shorter.
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Where would you be selling this product?
Take great care that you comply with licensing requirements for your marketplace.
Do you know if the combination you are suggesting is effective? There are gazillions of products already on the market so your effort would have to be something pretty special - which, with all due respect, I don’t think it is.
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Far easier just to buy the material - one less thing to worry about in getting your formulation standardised.
http://www.magnasweet.com/en/about-us.html
There are other manufacturers.
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Please don’t become over-influenced by the HLB system. There are places where it is useful (nonionic emulsions) and places where it is not so useful (ionic systems).
It would be wise for you to learn some of the fundamentals of cosmetic science so that you have a better understanding of what is going on in the products. There is a lot of information available through Google (and other search engines)
Aslo look to the right of these pages: Learn to formulate cosmetics! etc.
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Be careful not to apply the HLB system to areas where it is not applicable - such as a shampoo.
The opacifier (glycol stearate) in a shampoo is present in the form of very small platelet crystals, not as a solution and will not behave as if it were dissolved.
Even though there is a lot of pseudoscience and mumbo jumbo around the HLB idea, it remains after more than 60 years, as an arbitrary (rough and ready) method of formulating an emulsion. This is in part because commercial surfactants are invariably mixtures of materials and subject to batch-to-batch variation in composition.
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According to the declaration on the Boots (UK) website the ingredients are
Ingredients
Water, Glycerin (Vegetable) , Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter***, Cetrimonium Chloride, Cetearyl Alcohol, Glyceryl Stearate Citrate, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Cetyl Alcohol, Fragrance (Parfum), Glyceryl Caprylate, Macadamia Ternifolia Seed Oil, Sodium Lauroyl Hydrolyzed Silk, Mangifera Indica (Mango) Seed Butter, Panthenol, Melia Azadirachta Seed Oil Daucus Carota Sativa (Carrot) Seed Oil, Tocopherol, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Glyceryl Undecylenate, Potassium Hydroxide, Citric Acid, Benzyl Benzoate.
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900 - 100% concentration of acetic acid is required used at a level of up to 5% in the freshly distilled oil. Vineger would not be suitable.
My point in posting this was to spread information rather than suggest a practical means of “improving” lavender oil. It may well be that your lavender has a good linalool/linalyl acetate ratio and low “weedy” off notes.
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Completely off the subject but, I’ll let you know a secret.
Mitcham lavender oil (which was grown not far from where I live in the UK) had the reputation of being the finest lavender oil in the world. The secret that the Mitcham growers had was to add a small amount of acetic acid to their freshly distilled oil.
This addition had the effect of “sweetening” the oil by removing grassy and green notes and, over the long term, increasing the content of linalyl acetate (characteristic note of lavender) by reacting with the some of the linalool present.
At the perfumery companies I worked for, this trick was used in their high quality lavender based creations. I am passing this on as I don’t want this secret to be left on dusty shelves and lost for posterity.
It is not something to be done in a hurry. It can take upwards of a year to show a positive effect.
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Potassium glycyrrhizate (glycyrrhizinate) is commerially available and I am somewhat surprised that your supplier of the free acid form does not supply the salts.
Regarding your method of synthesis, glycyrrhizic acid is a glycoside and susceptible to hydrolysis to form the aglycone - which has somewhat different properties. You may be better adding KOH solution slowly to a suspension of the acid to avoid exposure to high concentrations of alkali.
Be careful assuming the purity and concentration of KOH. Only very rarely does it even approach 90%.
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What I meant about the number of patents was that the early ones are long expired so you are free to exploit them as you wish but, that doesn’t alter the fact that they are difficult to produce and need a precise manufacturing procedure.
The formulations offered by raw materials suppliers may well work but usually they have a disclaimer about patent rights and about stability of the product.
If you refer to EP0214540 Liquid abrasive cleaner compositions You will find one of the later (but still expired) Unilever patents with numerous references to their earlier work. These should be more instructive and helpful than anything from a raw materials supplier.
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Another thing comes to mind. There were stories that that products have been used as exfoliant toiletries.
They are intended as hard surface cleaners and should not be applied to skin.