[Pharma]

Well, for a fish restaurant, adding an acid helps . But it would be AFTER eating, not before.

Yea, mint & lemon sounds weird… unless it’s a Lebanese restaurant… then it fits in perfectly.

[Pharma]

@esthetician922 That would help to prolong shelf life.

@Abdullah Maybe, maybe not. ROE contains carnosic acid and carnosol as ‘actives’ which are oil soluble and therefore protect oils. Water soluble rosemary extract contains rosmarinic acid as ‘active’ constituent which is somewhat water soluble and soluble in alcohol and other medium polarity solvents. It will therefore be a lot less effective in protecting oils.

A combination with ROE, tocopherol, or ascorbyl palmitate would be preferable.

[Pharma]

Last time I checked, glamourcosmetics.it has Isolan GPS.

[Pharma]

I can only concur with both of you!

Always measure pH.

[Pharma]

@africanbug I completely forgot about the Abbott book. Started reading it few months ago but ‘lost’ it. Thanks for the reminder. That book is pure gold!

[Pharma]

Thanks for the tip @czkld . I’ll have a look at these.

[Pharma]

@lewhitak Now @Perry is torturing his brains how to give you a smart answer such as “Sure, dimethicone and silanoles” 🙂 .

Silicones are so different of what ‘nature’ has to offer that it’s simply impossible to get an alternative. A plan B maybe but that’s not an alternative, it’s an emergency solution.

I wonder whether undecane/tridecane are really useful as volatile cyclosiloxane replacements.

[Pharma]

It can be a solubility issue which is also common with other not super well water soluble preservatives such as propylparaben or sorbic acid: If added too fast, it will locally surpass solubility limit and flocculate. Due to poor/slow solubility, this small precipitates don’t readily re-dissolve. They also tend to attract more preservative and grow in size to form clearly visible lumps which become nearly impossible to dissolve (especially if oils are present in the formulation).

[Pharma]

It’s a great and active ingredient (if used in edible cosmetics which are actually eaten on a regular basis)…

Seriously, in cosmetics, I can’t see any benefit. If you want to go in that direction, use chitosan (cationic polymer of glucosamine).

[Pharma]

Cosmetics and chemistry/science will never be good friends unless the former can abuse the latter to ‘proof’ benefits/claims .

Most of cosmetic ‘science’ is highly empirical…

[Pharma]

You’ll have to try it. Sometimes it’s equal, sometimes better (regarding antioxidation).

Smoke ring? You mean just at the top edge where product/air/jar meet?

If so, get the air out of your bottle! You can’t chemically remove it in head space but only in your product and then it’s too late because, statistically, oxygen will hit vanillin always first (you can’t add thiosulfate at 5% or so). You could flush and seal your product under nitrogen or argon… but seriously, that’s overkill. Fill your bottles brim-full (however, the ring will appear once the bottle gets emptier) or go with an adequate airless system or a non-transparent one wherein you guarantee that the top layer never leaves the bottle (waste and cheating the customers, I know, but not a completely new idea either).

[Pharma]

Depends on the preservative and the formulation (what’s in your water and in your oil phase).

Very water soluble ones which do not interfere with surfactants may be added in proportion to the water phase, poorly water soluble ones are better added ‘calculated from total product’.

[Pharma]

The Kai Blendia is my dream solution. However, it will always remain a dream because Blendia is no longer produced ;( .

The Karl Roth device, I posted a link to that just a minute ago in another thread: Is it any good?

[Pharma]

It catches oxygen which isn’t obvious although it’s an antioxidant. Unlike phenolics such as tocopherol, it also reacts with oxygen to create water whereas phenolics only neutralise reactive products formed when oxygen reacts with ‘stuff’ such as unsaturated fatty acids. Thiosulfate and bisulfides do the same, they react with oxygen and not just degraded stuff.

[Pharma]

Depends on your product!

Lets take your low viscosity lotion: It is likely the type which, under the microscope, looks like peas in soup. Such emulsions like high sheer (I’d use the cross head of the Steba but would file it as sharp as possible, probably bending it a bit to get closer to a saw toothed impeller @letsalcido mentioned).

Your premium lotion on the other hand would, if made with the emulsifiers from your PM (lamellar phase emulsifiers, for those not spying on my inbox), look like lasagne wherein the pasta sheets (emulsifier combo) separate layers of béchamel sauce (water) from layers of ground meat (oil). For these, you don’t need fancy equipment, just an ordinary stick blender and, more importantly, a low speed device for cool down. The Floratech blend is likely to do half the emulsifying job by itself (you’ll probably see some hardening/ripening within hours to 1-2 days post production).

I’m quite yes-no-maybe yes-maybe-no for the last few months regarding buying a Dynamix… or maybe a Rotilabo hand held device for smaller volumes and a cheap Chinese stand mixer? Or another stick blender though I have one in my kitchen (which ain’t great for 100 ml but mixes okayinsh).

[Pharma]

Heavy water is nearly identical to normal water in most regards, even biological systems. Only regular consumption of considerable amounts will slightly mess with some enzymes which ultimately will cause certain health issues.

One drawback is that it is heavier and water-oil emulsions will more easily show creaming or sedimentation. On the up-side, you can fit 100 g in a smaller jar…

As an anecdotal side note: I once had a neighbour who, back in the day, had a friend working at PSI. Said guy worked with D2O and one day, they had the glorious idea of making coffee with heavy water. According to my neighbour, said coffee was amazing because it tasted EXACTLY like coffee :smiley: .

[Pharma]

letsalcido said:

…plus you can lower the RPM and stir for a long time during cool down with an overhead stirrer.

Good point! A stick blender tends to get too warm too quickly. Most can’t even handle 1-2 minutes of high viscosity mixing.

Regarding closed shrouds, what do you think of these two products?

Steba MX21 or Gastroback Design Pro E

[Pharma]

The Dynamix (the other links seem to be rebranded Dynamix) is also on my probably-should-buy list. The other stick blender with an emulsifying rotor-stator head has been discontinued a few years back.

The Bamix brand (made in Switzerland 🙂 ) has standard high-end stick blenders and was part of every Swiss household till bout 20 years ago. Unlike for example the Esge (East German brand) which has versions with similarly high RPM, Bamix has way higher torque too and, like Dynamix, can therefore handle high viscosity products quite easily. Bamix (and Esge too) is, apart from having the same exchangeable heads since the beginning (fitting to all models) and being hand-repaired back to the first model ever produced should something break (livelong guarantee), is just a ‘normal’ stick blender.

Growing up in such Swiss household means that I grew up with a Bamix… it doesn’t go down to 0 RPM, the lowest speed is still quite fast, way too fast to replace a propeller stirrer (see product selection). However, it is amongst the top plan B products should I decide to buy a new stick blender which isn’t a Dynamix.

Emulsifier 165 doesn’t really require a rotor-stator mixer but such a device always gives finer droplets = higher stability. Sometimes, this may result in higher or lower viscosity depending on the formulation.

Correct, magnetic stirring bars don’t work with medium to high viscosities and don’t even mix well with lower viscosities if they are ‘slimy’. Thin lotions do work, especially if pre-mix with a blender or the like and go with magnetic stirring bars having cross or octagonal shape and/or with a neodymium core.

And last but not least: I do have a solution for itching credit cards… although, that involves sending it to me for further treatment, preferably alongside your PIN. You can trust me, I treat your cards with the utmost respect and discretion and I promise to send it back when done! Greetings from Nigeria *cough-cough* I mean what lovely weather we have…

[Pharma]

Nope, hydroxide will easily react with the acid turning it into sodium laurate. But it behaves differently than sodium stearate which forms a unique kind of crystals stabilising/gelling oil.

[Pharma]

Looks as if you have difficulties scaling production up.

What’s the size of your lab batch and the production patches?

Do you use a different type of mixer/homogeniser?

[Pharma]

RDchemist15 said:

…
Is there any fundamental flaw in this reasoning? 
…

Yes, there is: In order for a seed crystal to work, you’d have to have a continuous phase to allow for a chain reaction. What you have, if I’m not mistaken, is an emulsion/micellar solution of isolated oil ‘particles’ surrounded by water. That’s like trying to spread corona when everyone does social distancing and stays well away from each other.

It’s not exactly a crystallisation temperature in the simple sense but a certain crystal modification which causes the effect. That one forms at/below a certain temperature, that’s correct, but it may take its time to do so. It’s like making chocolate where you can use seed crystals to ‘jump’ to the desired modification (if you manage to melt it fully) but this doesn’t mean you can speedrun the game. It simply tells the non-desired modification to turn into the right one which it can only do with the right cool-down gradient and the right mixing speed because size matters (crystal size). This said, even with seed crystals it’ll take time, patience, and skills (mind, not just the chocolate making).

[Pharma]

Pattsi said:

:# :# :# : cant agree/disagree on this because im on the sell side :# :# :#

Well then, let’s rephrase that one: Cosmetics, a statistically significant correlation between $$ spent and perception of how beautiful people think they’ll become…

Honestly, sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I were on the sell rather then the know side. My TV is probably half the size of yours… :smiley:

[Pharma]

Unlikely that sodium laurate will work. Nope, just putting lauric acid and glycerol in the same pot gives just a pot filled with lauric acid and glycerol.

If you need a plan B, you could try glyceryl stearate or glyceryl palmitate… if you happen to have that in stock. Though, I do think it’s not going to be transparent.

EDIT: And if you had berry wax in stock… that’s mostly palmitic and stearic acid .

[Pharma]

Pattsi said:

Aqua (and) Papain (and) Sodium Carbomer (and) Sodium Chloride (and) Carbomer. Linked-Papain™ C-MPB by BASF 

my guess is they just provide a longer shelf life like from very very short to short…

A copy-paste from their patent:

One preferred enzyme is papain, an enzyme obtained from unripe papaya.
One particularly preferred form of papain is Linked-Papain™ (papain
carbomer, as described in CTFA, the International Cosmetic Ingredients
Dictionary) in which papain is covalently immobilized to 1% polyacrylic
acid (900,000 daltons), commercially available from Collaborative
Laboratories, 3 Technology Drive, East Setauket, N.Y. 11733). In a
preferred embodiment, the enzyme is present in the formulation in an
amount between about 1% and 6%, more preferably between about 2% and 5%,
most preferably about 4% by weight. The ability of papain to act as an
exfoliant allows enhancement of penetration of any desired medicinal
agent beneficial to the skin, such as, for example, biological additives
(e.g, botanicals and herbals) and moisturizers. The activity of papain
is greatest at a pH of 6, although the enzyme retains about 75% of its
activity between pH 5 and 7. The cosmetic compositions preferably have a
pH that is basic relative to the pH of skin (the pH of which typically
ranging from approximately 4.5 to approximately 5.0), and preferably
have a pH of about 7.0.

I would assume that they didn’t perform activity tests. Many such covalent modifications lead to partial or full inactivation, let alone sterical hindrance (too much polymer between enzyme and target).

PEGylation is a common technique to render proteins more stable though more in a biological/pharmacokinetic way than a physico-chemical one. Such modifications are usually carried out using special linkers to ‘glue’ the side chains to specific positions of the proteins where they don’t interfere with their biological activity. Just as a guess I’d say BASF simply polymerises acrylic acid in the presence of papain. This would be an efficient and cost-saving strategy but also a death sentence for the enzyme.

Cosmetics, where dreams make people rich…

[Pharma]

As said, I think 1% fragrance oil should be good (if it smells good).

I don’t know why you want to add each 1% of the two Tweens… you mean a total of 2% with appropriate ratio? How should I know! If it were intended for addition to plain water, then it may not be enough but for your cream it is likely too much (as said, about 2% too much). Every fragrance/essential oil has a different requirement regarding the amount of needed solubiliser. In addition to that, you don’t need a transparent solution because you mix into a cream… which also contains enough emulsifiers and stuff to handle fragrance oil without any issue if homogenised well. (Hope you get the point 😉 .)