[lmosca]

I see…
That’s a lot less convoluted than you think. 
From the tables I have linked, you can determine the percent % (w/w) of both the NaOH and KOH relative to the needed Baume concentrations reported in those formulas.
Since you have the total weight of solution used you can calculate how much NaOH and KOH were used.
W_base = W_solution × %_concentration / 100

Those amounts will scale linearly, with the scaling of your formula, of course. To double check that the math is correct (and the formula) just plug in the results into a soap calculator, like soapcalc. 

The difference between the weights of solution and the one of base will give you the amount of water. That one is only minimally important though, because eventually the water will evaporate upon curing of the soap. Water is there to provide a vehicle for the base and as a fluidifier during the saponification reaction.

[lmosca]

For KOH: 
https://www.oxy.com/OurBusinesses/Chemicals/Products/Documents/CausticPotash/kohhandb.pdf (page 26)

For NaOH:
https://www.oxy.com/OurBusinesses/Chemicals/Products/Documents/CausticSoda/caustic.pdf (page 28)
those also report the density of the respective solutions.

Apart from that, I am not sure what you really need.

[lmosca]

Baume degrees are only an expression of specific gravity. You can find tables that relate percent of a certain solute to their Baume degrees. 
Look for “Baume degrees and X” where X is NaOH or KOH. Or somewhere along these lines.

But seriously, using Baume degrees should be fined and / or passable of jail time. Baumees are measured at 16 C. So you’ll also have to correct for the temperatures you’ll be using. 

[lmosca]

ceteareth-25 and all other ethoxylated emulsifiers/surfactants/whatevers are obtained by reacting the starting material with a certain number of molecules of ethylene oxide. 
It is during this process that some unwanted impurities form, the main one being 1,4-dioxane (which is a 2B carcinogen - carcinogenic in animals), 1,4-dioxane is also acutely toxic.

Why we find dioxane in products is related to the fact that it is not as easy to purify surfactants and emulsifiers (due to their pesky property of liking both water and lipids at the same time). So, you end product will always contain a little bit of dioxane, usually at the level of traces (part-per-million or below). 
These levels are determined to be safe for a specific use of the final product, so in the case of detergents or cosmetics, the content of toxic impurities needs to be safe for repeated (daily) use. 

It is up to the company that produces them to guarantee that the limits established by law are respected for each batch of product and sell a safe product to formulators and producers.

So if you bought your ceteareth-25 from a reputable supplier or re-packager, you can be sure that it conforms to the legislation of the area you live in. Selling ingredients that do not conform to the use they are intended to be used for is illegal and most companies won’t risk that.
If you want to be sure about origin, always ask to know the lot and batch numbers of your ingredients and the respective certificate of analysis. Shady suppliers and re-packagers usually fail or scramble at that step.

[lmosca]

@Pharma, LOL! What about a sourdough and sauerkraut mask?
Hey, at least they are all rich in alpha-hydroxy acids. Don’t know about the sensorials after-effects… Will moldy-cabbage-umami flavor/scent be the next market hype in cosmetics/perfumery?

[lmosca]

@ngarayeva001, I love my overnight AHA! I might consider trying out lipoic acid and compare the two at some point.

[lmosca]

Yikes! Most products they have for sale only contain cetyl alcohol as “emulsifier”. Most are unpreserved (because of the well known (non-)preservative action of sandalwood oil) and the ones that are are seriously underpreserved (potassium sorbate, sodium anisate, sodium levulinate) while containing clay (which I guess it has not been sterilized).

I am surprised they have been in business for 20 years. They must have really good lawyers.

[lmosca]

polymetaphosphate starts to hydrolyze at pH above 10. You get metaphosphate that is not a water softener. (It’s appalling how little information you can find in literature about this pretty much ubiquitous stuff).

Being a very ionic species, you would have a decrease in lathering (like you would with salt), otherwise, depending on how much you are putting in your bar, you might create a brittle bar that breaks apart. I suppose for water softening, however, you don’t need much.

For lathering, you can always change your oil composition to a higher capric/palmitic fraction, add sodium lactate, increase ricinoleic fraction up to 5%, or reduce your superfatting. 

For water softening, you can use sodium citrate (if you are worried about being naturally derived), or tetrasodium EDTA (best option), which also prevents rancidity in the bar in conjunction with BHT. 

[lmosca]

@ngarayeva lipoic acid is provided already in the oxidized form (disulfide, or with the S-S bond). It is converted in-vivo by reduction to the active form (dithiol, or with two -SH groups).

I am not aware of its mechanism of action, though. Thiols (-SH) are indeed antioxidants (because they can be reoxidized to the disulfide form, just like glutathione does), and they are powerful nucleophiles, so they may have a keratolytic effect. 

ALA is not essential, as it can be introduced from diet and can be synthesized by the body and is a key enzyme co-factor in cellular respiration and cytoprotection. 

Maybe someone else on this forum knows more (thinking about @Pharma).

@joanlante you should measure solids by weight and not by volume.
I don’t think you should throw that ingredient away (ALA is not cheap, for a start). Just research a way to properly formulate it. You can make water-like serums with propanediol, for example. Or you can switch to a lotion-like emulsion that will dissolve (although I don’t know how much) a bigger amount of ALA than water alone would. 
I’ve never used ALA myself so I can’t say if I find it useful or not, if you do, then use it!

[lmosca]

@joanlante
6 mL of ALA, did you mean 6 g? 

If so, 6 mL or 6 g, in 30 mL of water will give you a 17% solution, not 5%.

Emulsions work well in solubilizing the otherwise water-insoluble ALA, most commercial formulations with lipoic acid are, in fact, emulsions of some kind. 

[lmosca]

@martii94 may I ask you what do you mean with the following statement?

This was made for me by a toxicologist to be a hydrating serum. 

I am not sure I fully understand if we intend the same professional figure when we refer to a toxicologist.

As retinol goes, if that’s the Retinol H10 from Nikko. then it’s a 10% solution in Caprylic/Capric Glycerides, which are otherwise missing from your LOI. Hydrogenated Retinol just behaves as a humectant, there is no actual proof that it works in the same way as retinol or retinoic acid and the only study I could find is hidden behind a patent from Nikko corp (in vitro, monitors Hyaluronic acid production). 

Until there is some real evidence, it just behaves as a glorified form of glycerin, in my book.

Aside from what @Perry already pointed out, 2% allantoin is far too much. At room temperature allantoin is only soluble to 0.5%, and it tends to crystallize back to very sharp crystals that are not pleasant at all.

Of all the extracts you have there, you can remove them all with great benefits to the color and odor of your serum. Aside from the astringency of Witch Hazel (Hamamelis Virginiana) and Horse Chestnut (Aesculum Hippocastanum) all the others are just a mixture of unproven chemicals. 
Aescin (the triterpenoid of horse chestnut is effective as a vasotonic, and there is evidence it penetrates the skin, in ex-vivo models). However, you may want to get a standardized extract with known concentration of Aescin and use a final concentration between 0.2-2%. 

[lmosca]

@deneuxben, while it is widely accepted that you should never mix cationic/anionic surfactants, that’s a generalization based on factual evidence. 

Indeed, there are cases where cationic and anionic mixtures can interact and precipitate from a solution, thereby removing themselves from the product or seriously reducing their “detergency”. 

Not unlike you would use CAPB or decylglucoside to reduce the “harshess” of SDS. What you aim at achieving here is forming a mixed surfactant system that has a synergistic effect, thanks to the presence of a mixture of anionic/cationic/amphoteric/non-ionic surfactants.

There is evidence that the largest synergy is achieved by mixing anionic/cationic. This is because the structures formed in solution are more tightly packed and can emulsify more “dirt” per number of micelles formed.

Unfortunately, those are also the mixtures that most likely form precipitates.

So it’s a matter of a delicate balance between the types of surfactants used and their relative ratio, in order to impede or slow down the formation of insoluble materials.

In your case, you have a solid mixture containing non-ionic, anionic, cationic. These work well together because the non-ionic surfactant helps stabilize the mixture of the other two. Furthermore, the solid state of these limits the ability of these surfactant to form the structures that cause precipitation. 

One, very basic experiment that I am thinking might help as a way to determine whether a combination of surfactants is suitable would be to prepare solutions of the selected surfactants in DI water at concentrations equal to 1x, 10x, 25x, 50x, 100x (the first or the last two might be difficult to achieve with some surfactants) the CMC of the surfactant and mix them together in the ratio that you would expect to be using them in your final product. Stir for a little bit without making the product foam and let stand. You can observe your mixtures over hours or days to see if they change. Some mixture might flocculate, some may produce powdery precipitate at the bottom (or top of the liquid), some may not change much. In this way, you could build yourself a rough “phase diagram” for mixture of surfactants.

[lmosca]

@Agate isethionic acid is made by treating ethylene oxide with sodium bisulfite. Technically this could be considered as an ethoxylation reaction (of the bisulfite anion). 
I couldn’t find any reliable report on residual levels of dioxane in isethionic acid. Most of the comments about dioxane in isethionates are very well clustered among websites and blogs that are very well known chemical scaremongers, which is to say that they’ve seen the word “ethylene oxide” and lost their minds about it.

However, the fact that isethionic acid (precursor to isethionates like SCI) is used to manufacture taurine (which is used in food). It’s also a very small ionic compound, with no surfactant ability by itself. Purification is a lot easier to perform on these.

[lmosca]

@ngarayeva001, likely yes… see this link
https://cen.acs.org/business/consumer-products/companies-getting-14-dioxane-home/98/i11

It is possible that supply will be uninterrupted, but prices may rise as production and purification will be changed to meet specs.

[lmosca]

@Umff, unfortunately, there is no way to get rid of dioxane when producing ethoxylated products when performing reactions with ethylene oxide. 
You can make ethoxylated stuff by producing the poly(ethylene oxide) chain before hand, purifying it, and reacting that further to give you your final product. Going one way or the other has a process cost difference of 100-500x.

Ethoxylated stuff is a huge market, not only for the personal care. Eventually the industry will have to comply with the law and find better ways to purify their products. (Which is good, for prices of pure dioxane have increased due to many factors, purifying it out will produce an added value by-product that companies can sell to research labs where it is needed). Or reduce the amount of dioxane produced as by-product (bad, as pure dioxane prices will skyrocket, like it happened to acetonitrile about 13 years ago)

@EVchem , he is referring to this NY senate bill 
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s4389

It’s likely that many other states will follow, California might be next.

[lmosca]

@Perry this is an interesting issue (approved colorants).

Carrot SCO2 extract, depending on source or raw material (peels or flesh) and conditions of extraction (pressure, flow and eventual co-solvent), can have a different content of beta-carotene (usually other carotenes and other xanthophyllins). In some cases, it can be up of the majority of the extract. 

According to FDA regs, both beta carotene and carrot oil can be used for food coloring, but only beta carotene only is allowed for cosmetics. In case of beta-carotene it should pass certain tests (or titers, purity and minimum of 96% spectrophotometric assay). That means that not all of the SCO2 carrot extracts might qualify, but some may.
Another reason to always check / ask for a certificate of analysis.

[lmosca]

@Perry, You would expect that more when attached to it there is a monetary / marketing value. 
Academic publishing (where there shouldn’t be any monetary value attached to research, at least in principle) is not less afflicted by that. Even peer review is not able to sift through the “inflation”, “non-reproducible results”, or “plain lies”! I guess the monetary value in academia is each own h-index, grant funding rate, and personal publicity. It seems that everyone knows that even a minimal screw up can cost your career, and the reputation of your students/collaborators, yet people keep doing it.

I just amused myself and looked up a product I saw advertised on FB; a touted miracoulous vitamin C serum. 15% ascorbic acid in water based phase, with a pinch of hyaluronic acid and ferulic acid (1%). $150+ per 30 g (in a bottle with dropper). There is no limit to anything anymore… 

[lmosca]

@deneuxben absolutely, I am glad you were not overwhelmed by it 😉

I am not the best person to ask about Organic certifications et similia. Perhaps someone else can chime in regarding surfactants. It will likely depend on your geographic area and which kind of standard you want to adhere to. 
USDA regulates the label “Organic” in the US for what concern agricultural products. So there are no true organic surfactants, you can use “organic ingredients” or “raw materials” but every surfactant needs some kind of physical and chemical process to produce, and the “Organic” label will disappear. You can adhere to the use of organic ingredients (as in agriculturally derived) and organic manufacturing / traceability, according to the NOP (national organic program) and have your product certified. 
https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/OrganicCosmeticsFactSheet.pdf

COSMOS allows for surfactants like the ones you and @Agate mentioned. In addition, you will find lauroamphoacetate is also ECOcert compliant. I don’t think AOS, SCI, and SLSA are COSMOS compliant (SLSa is ECOcert).

In terms of coco-glucoside, among the series of glucosides, is perhaps the harsher. Decyl glucosides is usually regarded as the mildest of all. If you have access to that it gives more consistent results and it’s going to be “toning down” the SCS (or SLS if you have it).
Blending SCS and SLS will not change much (if the final % ASM stays the same). 
As a side note, most SLS is an “enriched” mixture of lauryl sulfate. See a thread from Agate a couple of days ago. 
https://chemistscorner.com/cosmeticsciencetalk/discussion/7369/cocoyl-vs-lauryl#latest

As secondary surfactants, my favorite is, hands down, CAPB. It is COSMOS-Okayed. Very mild, and support foaming of the primary surfactants.

It’s interesting that you are observing both some samples going crumbly, and some going hard. I still think that the homogeneity of your mixture is a problem here. As for why some your bars go hard, then I will try to explain it as a cementing effect. Water goes in, dissolves some of your water solubles, redistributes through the bar, and when it evaporates, it deposits them back.

Stearic acid is not available as free fatty acid in cocoa butter, but as a triglyceride. At low percentages, stearic acid helps lubricity of the hair, however, I find it draggy above 1-2%.

Comedogenicity is as important for the hair. Clogging the scalp, or allowing detritus and sebum accumulation in the scalp are common factors in hair loss. 
The health of the hair follicle is of paramount importance in all cases of alopecia. If your follicles are dying out or are damaged then your hair start thinning out.
Fatty alcohols and “lighter” oils with low oleic fractions are preferred (because of Malassezia proliferation, you want to go light on oils, this commensal ubiquitous fungus thrives on oils and spits out free fatty acids from its metabolism, the one that has been found most irritating for the skin is oleic acid).

It’s interesting that carrot extract gives you a stable coloration. How long have you had the samples colored with carrot extract maintain their coloring for? Whenever I tried to use natural colorants they inevitably go brown or gray after a couple of months at best. Now I just embrace whatever color (mostly white or off white), or use synthetics dyes or pigments if I want a color.

For vit E, just reduce it below 0.5 or even 0.1%. It really does not do much to hair and the more you put, the more you risk rancidity and off-smells. Ultimately, you could just leave it out if you don’t have many unsaturations.

For the stickiness problem, one way to go would be reducing hygroscopics. Also, just do not put it on a flat surface. You will always have some material getting dissolved and gluing back your bar to the surface. Use a soap dish with tall ridges or bumps, so that all the water drains and air circulates all around the bar. A dry shampoo bar should not feel tacky. It must feel like touching chalk or have a smooth surface with a waxy appearance (if you use high contents of butters and oils).

In terms of homogeneity and coarseness, it looks like you have pellets of SCS. Those will not dissolve fast enough during your formulation phase to disperse the surfactant in the mixture. Having coarse / non uniform particle sizes is a common problem in compounding solids. The more uniform the particle sizes are, the better the mixing and homogeneity of the final product. Here you have a heterogeneous amphiphilic part (SCS) which is bound together with a mixture of hydrophilic and hydrophobic matrices (other surfactants and water solubles, and fats, respectively), that usually do not like each other, won’t completely mix, and will likely form separate domains (or phases) upon solidifying. Wherever you have two solid phases touching each other, you have a “fault” it is called a continuous boundary defect in chemistry. That’s where your material is more likely to break apart, hence the crumbly texture.
If you reduce the size of particles you maximize homogeneity and reduce the possibility of it being crumbly.

For water content, you will never be able to completely remove it. There will be always a residual content of water. This is what is called the hydration water. Imagine things like salt, sugars, alcohols, and charged compounds (cationic, anionic, amphoterics) all come with a few molecules of water that are bound to the polar group with some sort of weakish bond (electrostatic, hydrogen bonds). Unless you heat, and apply vacuum for a long period of time you will never remove them. What you can remove is the “solvation” water, the water that was there as a solvent. There is a lot of chemistry beyond that, but in general the content of “solvated” water in a material will depend on its vapor pressure and the vapor pressure of water in the air surrounding your material (which can be approximated by relative humidity). 
Overall, most of the water loss happens during the first few days. You can check that by weighing a sample bar on a scale every 12 hours. Eventually, you will see the weight stabilizing around a certain value (it will still go down, but less so). You can do a couple of tests on your samples to see an optimal “drying time” and compare it other properties, like hardness, foaming ability etc…
Now the good news, the hydration water, the one that doesn’t go away just by air drying, is not important for you. It won’t promote microbial growth, because it’s tightly bound and cannot be utilized effectively by microbes.

That’s why solid products can virtually be unpreserved, for theoretical purposes, as their water activity is so low that nothing can grow on them - while from the practical point of view a preservative is needed when there is even the possibility of an accidental contact with water, and even more so with those products that for sure will be in contact with water. That water in excess will permeate into the bar and will be your growth solvent for microbes.
The preservative will be dispersed all within you mixture, if you choose one that has both lipophilic and hydrophilic growth inhibitors. You need that so both the lipophilic and hydrophilic parts of your bar are protected, and at the same time it is not just “leached” away by water. 

Please keep us posted on updates of your formulas!

[lmosca]

@EVchem is correct, both the anti-oxidant and free-radical scavenging ability of tocopherols is due to the phenolic group. Anything that “traps” the phenolic group (like the acetate ester, or methylation) make the oxidation of the hydroquinone group really hard, if not impossible, in biological conditions. And it completely blocks the reactivity toward radicals.

As per the link provided by the OP, I feel that they seem confused whether even they are selling one or the other. First they talk about tocopherols, then tocopherol “active form” then tocopheryl acetate. The only reason tocopheryl acetate is preferred it’s the stability against oxidation. The more stable something is, the most likely it is not to do anything in/on the skin. 

[lmosca]

The main problem that I see is that you’ve put yourself in a catch-22 situation.
It’s a multivariate type of problem.

You have opted for very strong surfactants (SCS and CG), those are typically very cleansing. To compensate for the stripping of oils from your hair and scalp, you resort to adding hard fats. Now, those also have the effect on the surfactant, by pre-maturely trapping some of it (and vice versa) and reducing its ability to clean the hair (concomitantly, they reduce foam). You can see that you cannot change one without changing the other.

The second issue that you have is the homogeneity of your mixture.
There you have beads of SCS. You cannot melt them (too high of a melting temp). There is no way out of this, as you cannot dissolve it in the oil phase, and you have a too little of a water phase (otherwise loaded with other stuff) to dissolve a large amount of it. At this point you have an non-homogeneous mixture that needs a binder. That is why most opt for butters low melt oils and fatty alcohols.

What you have here is a continuous matrix made of hard waxes, oils, intespersed by insoluble powders (SCS beads, then all your hydrolyzed proteins, water soluble ingredients). Upon contact with water, water will migrate towards the regions of your bar that contain the most hydrophilic ingredients (humectants, proteins, surfactants) and will dissolve them at different rates.

Now, some of those surfactant will dissolve whatever lipophilic compound they see. In an homogeneous case scenario your oil phase would be completely homogeneous, but it’s not. You poured melted fats over a large amount of room temperature solids. The fats slowly cool down as you mix them with the powders. What happened here is that you obtained a fractional crystallization of the higher melting point components (mainly the stearic fraction of cocoa butter). Whatever is left behind solidifies amorphously and will be the first one to be dissolved by the surfactants. 
This will create preferential channels where water will accumulate during use and continuing dissolving your bar from the inside out. That’s why you are obtaining a crumbly texture (I suppose it gets worse during use? if not, there might be another reason).

I personally do not agree with your choice of fatty matter. Cocoa butter is comedogenic and clogs pores. You don’t want that on your face, and you want that even less on your scalp, as it may increase the rate of hair loss, it is also draggy, and this increases the forces to which your hair are subjected to when brushing/combing/drying. If you stick with fatty alcohols, they have lower comedogenicity and they improve lubricity of the scalp/hair.

I also noticed that you have Carrot extract and vitamin E oil both at 1%. 
If you are adding them for claim, then reduce them to 0.1%  (or less, even).
If you are adding them not for claim, there is no scientific evidence that they do anything to hair.
If you are using vit E as anti-oxidant, then at 1% it will have the opposite effect, potentially promoting rancidity (by shuttling electrons and protons back and forth). Reduce below 0.5, or even better 0.25%

Regarding you pH, you are unfortunately limited by the fact that the SCS is not homogeneous to the mixture. I am glad to see that your final mixture after neutralization is 5.5.
Which method did you use to determine this amount?
What I do is: I take away a certain amount of mixture and record its weight (W1), dissolve it water to a 10% final concentration, to that add solution of citric acid (V1) (or NaOH if I need to go the other way, but it rarely happens for shampoos and syndets bars), until I reach the pH I want. Then, I calculate residual batch size (what remains after the sample, W2) and from there calculate how much solution of citric acid to add to the mixture (W2/W1)*V1. 
You can do that on the initial surfactants+water soluble ingredients without oil phase (oils will never change pH, unless they are really bad).
Proteins and aminoacids usually act as buffers of pH, but depending on manufacturers, you may have slightly more alkaline or acidic batches.

Your stickiness problems is dual, on one side you have wet, sticky stuff (oats, proteins, panthenol). On the other you have fatty materials that have not completely solidified (maybe). 
You can help unmolding by freezing the mold. However, as you remove the bar from the mold, it will start condensing water (if you live in humid climate, even more so).

As @Agate said, you will have to wait until most water has evaporated from your bar (this may take anywhere from 24 hours to a few days).

Undoubtedly, you solid bar will have a very low water activity. However, there is no way you can monitor said water activity during the use of the shampoo bar. And since a shampoo bar touches not only water, but dirty hair, hands, surfaces, and is exposed to air all of the time, you have an explosive cocktail of microbial contamination and food. Remember that mold grows even when there is no apparent food (think about the grout on your bathroom tiles), just because they get wet every day. Better safe than sorry, add a preservative!

In my opinion you will have a better chance at reformulating this bar from scratch. 

- Change surfactants, and change their forms (powders vs beads or noodles), If you want to keep SCS, you can increase mildness by using Cocamidopropyl betaine (CAPB), instead of Coco-glucoside (it’s one of the worse surfactants in terms of sensorials, if you ask me). Or go for blends containing AOS, SCI, SLSA.

- By increasing mildness, you won’t need all that fatty cargo, and by not using coarse materials, you won’t need a binder, as the amount of water during your manufacturing will be enough to cement everything together. If you want to keep some as a binder, switch butters and waxes for fatty alcohols and cationic emulsifiers as substantive conditioners. 

- If you want to keep oils/butters, reduce them to a claim ingredient (0.5% or less, even 0.01%), they are only detrimental to a shampoo. If you opt for liquid oils, steer clear from those that have high comedogenic ratings and with high levels of oleic acid (Malassezia loves oleic acid). Opt for liquid waxes instead, or polyunsaturated oils with high linoleic / linolenic fractions (but those are more prone to become rancid).

- Decrease the complexity of your formula, you have two hydrolyzed proteins and panthenol there, use only one. They are film formers, but this is also a rinse off, so not much of them will stay. Plus, you have a protein/polysaccharide powder (oat), that adds to the water retention ability of the shampoo bar.

- Use a preservative!

[lmosca]

You have got an incredibly large amount of fatty matter in your shampoo bar. 
13+% (including the brassica alcohol). (softness, melting)

You also have got a very heavy hygroscopic (water absorbing) load, 15+% (panthenol, oats, hydrolyzed proteins, citric acid). (stickiness)

How do you manufacture your bars? Do you mix and compress everything together? Do you go through melt phase? (crumbly texture)

Other question, how do you correct your pH? SCS and Coco-glucoside have very high pH which is destructive for hair and scalp. Adding solid citric acid will not change that. 

Also, as a quick note, you do not have a preservative for something that regularly comes in contact with water (and, with all the bug food you have in there, will absorb a lot of it). Definitely unsafe.

[lmosca]

The difference between Lauryl- and Cocoyl-products is more pronounce when the surfactants are not blended and used as the only surfactant. Most consumer products are blends and the final effects and sensorials will likely be the same (or only slightly different) when replacing one for the other.
In general, it seems that people prefer cocoyl-products because they are slightly milder on skin.
Because lauryl-glycerides are the major component of coconut oils, then your cocoyl-surfactant will always lie pretty close to the lauryl-surfactant in therms of properties. Deviations are imparted by the relative ratio between the lauric-fraction and the capric/caprylic and palmitic/stearic/oleic fractions.

One possible additional factor to consider is defined by the industry standards (see Perry’s post). Thanks to that, you can always rely on Lauryl-surfactants to behave the same way in every formulation (including their native pH). Cocoyl-surfactants will have slightly different properties across different producers, depending on their sources of oils / manufacturing process (including their native pH, which might require different adjustment at the end of your formulation process).

Then, there is the marketing effect of saying something is derived from Coconut, or otherwise naturally derived. 
I think Lauric acid / Lauric alcohol are still produced largely from vegetable sources (perhaps 25-35% is produced from petrochemicals). So, if you source your Lauryl-surfactant manufacturer properly you can claim that as well.

In my own view, the only difference here would be “how green is my surfactant?” Using Cocoyl-based, means that I didn’t have to purify the Lauric fraction from the others (usually done by fractional distillation of esters or alcohols, which is an energy intensive process). But this opens up for another can of worms.

[lmosca]

Again, if you read WHO recommendations you can see that chloroxylenol has a fair rating at deactivating “some” viruses. Chlorhexidine, is the other one, together with benzalkoniums and iodophors, that display virucidal activity.

You will be exposing yourself, and whoever uses your product, to a sub-par sense of security.

If you analyze list N from EPA, you can see that only hypochlorite, alcohol based, and quaternary ammonium compounds display high activity across the board, with averages of required contact times between 30 seconds to 10 minutes. Chloroxylenol does not even appear in list N, other phenolic disinfectant require 10 minutes of required contact time.

The Canadian list, that reports chloroxylenol, does not report contact time, however, if you compare that with a similar class of “phenolic” disinfectants reported on EPA’s list N you see that they score faily bad, only 3 out of 9 received a YES on Emerging viral pathogen claim. And almost all of them require 5-10 minutes of contact time.

I regularly sanitize my formulating table, tools. I regularly sanitize my kitchen counter, stove, and sink. And I regularly wash my hands (and use alcohol based sanitizer when needed). If I had to keep a surface wet with disinfecting solution (including my hands) for 10 minutes before wiping, I will probably blow a vent in my brain, spend and additional hour cleaning everything every day. That will, of course be for the first few days. After 3-4 days of this, my hands will probably be a bleeding mess of scaling skin. 

Although, most people will probably not observe the 10 minutes contact time required to be effective, they’ll get bored, or impatient, wipe after 1 minute, and go ahead with their life as usual. This will instill a false sense of security, and will promote the selection of disinfectant-resistant strains (which is already happening for chlorhexidine, triclosan, hexachlorophene, and benzalkoniums). 

[lmosca]

If that’s the one, it is not intended for repeated use on skin, from what I can read on the SDS. It clearly say to use on the skin only upon dilution, which will basically render the whole of hand sanitization pointless. Dettol can be used to disinfect small areas of skin and very minor wounds.

However, it is not recommended for covid19 by the people who make it (reckitt benckiser).

Both CDC and FDA only recommend alcohol based hand sanitizers rubs. I am sure they have plenty of reasons/data to back that up. They also advise against using surface/medical/wound disinfectants (liquid, spray, or wipes) for repeated hand cleaning.

[lmosca]

Fekher, no it’s not.
RB produces Dettol Antiseptic (with chloroxylenol) and Dettol Disinfectant (with benzalkoniums). The latter is the one that is suggested for use against Covid19.