[Pharma]

1. Coconut oil and coconut derived surfactants are two separate things and have basically nothing in common (except that the raw material grew on the same tree).

You could simply switch to palm oil derivatives :smiley: (these can be nearly identical to coconut oil derivatives).

2. Depending on what causes sensitivity, some surfactants may probably cause symptoms in highly allergic persons. Although, it’s rather unlikely that common allergens (proteins) could survive all synthesis, separation, and purification steps a surfactant runs through.

3. The decyl moiety from decyl glucoside might actually come from coconut oil . Very often, it’s not clear from where exactly the fatty part of a surfactant comes from. These days, it’s often palm oil which is, depending on supply/demand, often mixed with coconut oil. Probably due to the ‘palm oil free’ trend, hydrogenated canola and sunflower oil become a new source for longer chain fatty acids. If you read ‘decyl’, ‘capryl’ or the like, it’s usually coconut or palm oil. Unfortunately ‘palmityl’ and ‘stearyl’ may be derived from many things such as palm, canola, tallow, and even coconut.

[Pharma]

LuisJavier said:

…I was also curious whether, during production of 1,3 butanediol, the 1,4 butanediol is an isomer ”byproduct”. Is this the case? 

Shouldn’t be the case because the two are usually obtained via different synthetic routes.

[Pharma]

@Perry Lactates (= pH adjusted lactic acid, so to speak) are good humectants, similar to PCA, amino acids, polyols etc.

[Pharma]

Holy, when I started reading here about No Poo and Loo Poo, I was wondering ‘The heck is this? Is he/she seriously asking for advice regarding constipation or antidiarrheal drugs or how to de-clog or clean a toilet??’ :sweat_smile:

How can Loo Poo = ‘(to take) a dump in the john’ be a marketing term for HAIR products? ROFLMAO

[Pharma]

Well, a water/alcohol mixture is basically a mixture of water and ethanol :blush: .

You’ll have to try which proportion does suit your needs best. The advantage here is, that with enough alcohol, your stock solution is self-preserving and usually has a good shelf life. If you’re not in for ethanol, glycerol or better yet a glycol (they’re closer to ethanol in solvent behaviour).

Consider contacting the manufacturer to ask what kind of solvent they used to make the extract.

[Pharma]

Unless you use some means of preservation, fresh = wet plant material will rot even if drowned in oil. A better and certainly more convenient option are dried ones.

[Pharma]

The main (active) constituents of soapnut extract are saponins. Saponins belong to the rather arbitrary family of surfactants. Given it’s main composition and usage, that plant extract and even the whole aril may be regarded as surfactant although it’s technically a ‘mixture’ which functions as surfactant due to it’s surfactant like qualities which it has because it’s surfactant like due to it being mostly surfactant :smiley: .

BTW a surfactant is not a chemical category but only a functional one. However, said category is subdivided into groups and families of chemically related compounds or compounds sharing certain functional groups.

[Pharma]

Your marigold extract is a lipophilic one, probably obtained by supercritical CO2 extraction. It’s oil soluble and hence added to the oil phase.

Your chamomile extract is, as it seems, a hydro-alcoholic one and therefore best added to the water phase. Because it’s likely not fully dissolving in your aqueous phase, it should be pre-diluted (I’d go with a water/alcohol or water/polyol mixture) and filtered should it show insoluble precipitates.

[Pharma]

IR spectroscopy methods can be used to determine purity if you have a standard and do a calibration curve. Depending on what you want to test and where you set your limits for ‘pure’, IR may not suffice.

HPTLC is a lot nicer (not just from a visual point of view 🙂 ) when it comes to plant extracts. In case of Aloe, it may however prove difficult. The Aloe extract used for cosmetics is mostly a carbohydrate polymer… one solution can be to determine/visualise other secondary metabolites to determine quality/purity (pure with regard to pure Aloe or laced material) and another a sugar TLC of acid hydrolysed product.

[Pharma]

IMHO if your product was white in the beginning, that beige colour there means it’s likely dead and doomed.

BTW might be microbial contamination/fermentation too. This might also explain the drop in pH.

Oh, and you shouldn’t bottle and stabi-test something that’s not yet dissolved to the point it should.

[Pharma]

The amount of NaOH or KOH depends on your ingredients and will be safe because the alkali will chemically react . Check your pH! Besides, you’re not going to use as much as you’re using borax or your hair will turn into felt.

NaOH and KOH are safe to handle if you’re careful and follow a few rules:

Add cold water first, then the alkali, and mix carefully until dissolved. By preference, use enough water because dissolving these bases will result in considerable heat. A 1% solution will barely heat up whereas a 10% solution may get steaming hot.

Wear safety goggles, good goggles, and gloves. If some gets into your eye, goodbye. It takes a split second to permanently burn your cornea. On normal skin, rinse with a lot of cold water and you’ll be fine. Your skin will start to feel soapy should some cross-contamination get on your hands and you’ll know that it’s time to rinse your hands. Be cautious not to touch your eyes during your work because already a small indirect contamination can waste your eyesight.

Always close the container firmly. A: NaOH and KOH attract water and B: you don’t accidentally spill the whole container.

If you’re dissolving larger quantities, have a bottle of kitchen vinegar at arms length. Spillage of some litres of lye solution won’t just ruin your clothes but it might prove tricky to rinse yourself from tip to toe under the tap; using vinegar to neutralise the alkali can come in handy. Mind, this is not something you should do as a standard operation procedure especially not with your eyes (you don’t want to acid burn the remaining bit of eye you still have after an alkali burn)! Having that bottle nearby (and open or it’s useless ) is more of a psychological thing which calms your thoughts and fears and hence steadies your hands -> goal achieved without actually using it!

[Pharma]

Bicarbonate, if it even works because it’s not really alkaline, will form carbon dioxide sooner or later = bubbles and overpressure. I highly advice against it! If ever, go with carbonate but avoid any acidic pH or the same happens. Unlike hydroxides which fully react if added properly, the final product using a carbonate will be fairly alkaline and aggressive, nothing to be put on hair.

[Pharma]

@Perry Aluminium (zinc and some alloys too) + acid = hydrogen gas. The effect may be stronger if antioxidants are present. The acid can be as simple and weak as diluted vinegar.

Some tube coatings don’t completely seal the whole inner surface or are susceptible to certain ‘solvents’, rendering them permeable enough for chemical reactions.

[Pharma]

BTW BergaMuls ET 1 does, apart from water gelling, also forms Pickering emulsions or, should I say, uses said principle to stabilise oil droplets within a (partially) gelled water phase .

[Pharma]

Laurannecarly said:

… We’ve been experiencing significant pressure build up/bubble formation
after 2 weeks of 40 degree stability testing with an emulsion. There is minimal discolouration of the Ascorbic acid at this stage, so we are doubting whether this is related to the oxidation of the ascorbic acid…

You can’t necessarily correlate pressure/gas with discolouration. A gas takes a 1’000 times larger volume than a solid. In case of ascorbic acid, this would be hydrogen gas -> H2 is highly flammable and hence easy to test . Though usually, ascorbic acid does not degrade like that but reacts with oxygen to form water or reduces other stuff = no bubbles and no pressure build-up but instead rather an underpressure.

The main coloured degradation product of ascorbic acid is dehydroascorbic acid but it’s not the only possible degradation product. It has just a beige colour and is therefore not always visibly recognized or only at higher concentrations. 0.1% degradation (of your 15%) will not be seen by the naked eye but could, in theory, produce a fair amount of pressure. Neglecting molecular weights, this would increase your product’s volume by 15%. Similarly, a probably barely visible degradation of 1% of the added ascorbic acid would turn a 100 ml bottle into a 250 ml balloon.

What does sometimes happen is degassing (liberation of air dissolved in water). Boiling your water before use helps against that. But that’s purely speculative and I don’t see anything which would stand out as a bubble-builder… true, knowing your product’s pH might prove helpful.

[Pharma]

Borax is alkaline and hence acts as a base and a buffer (e.g. borax is more forgiving than standard bases in regard to overdoses). You may try sodium or potassium hydroxide, TEA or the like as alternatives.

BTW preservation is ‘just’ a side effect of borax.

[Pharma]

Since there are usually no strict rules when it comes to cosmetics especially with regard to chemistry, I’d say you’re fine except for the petrochemical part (HEC, phenoxyethanol, ethylhexylglycerin). Me personally, I’d also hesitate with the ‘No PEG’ claim  because hydroxyethyl cellulose is a pegylated cellulose derivative. True, it doesn’t carry polyethyleneglycol branches but only many monoethyleneglycol side chains which are derived from the same petrochemical process, meaning pegylation using ethylene oxide (BTW phenoxyethanol is obtained with the same reaction). On the cosmetics cleanliness scale, HEC is as good or bad as PEG although it’s not a PEG in sensu stricto.

[Pharma]

Perfumer’s Apprentice, never ordered there but heard good things about them.

[Pharma]

Dibutyl lauroyl glutamide and/or dibutyl ethylhexanoyl glutamide, both by Ajinomoto.

[Pharma]

There’s another discussion regarding your question .

Short version: Sure they do but it’s not advised to hire that sort of company. Get a more trustworthy one which gives you the right.

[Pharma]

I was thinking at something like what’s done with a LUMiSizer or LUMiFuge .

Yes, you can see if it’s flocculation, coalescence, flotation/sedimentation…

Okay, phase transition and uhhh…. how cool is that, cosmetics as a new type of battery and fusion power :smiley: . I honestly have no clue what you’re talking LoL. What I understand now, is, that you need phase transition and that one has to be temperature dependent.

AFAIK, Spans aren’t usually regarded as alpha-gel builders (that’s what’s often regarded as crystal network). Alpha-gels are commonly formed by surfactant mixtures with fatty alcohols… THIS might be helpful/informative.

[Pharma]

Melting points of pure surfactants do not correlate with their PIT .

Did you try centrifugation to ‘time-laps’ your product? It should be fairly easy since you’ve got a DLS device to follow it over time. Does your device allow determination of size distribution too? Then you can ‘read’ from your measurements what happens especially if you’re taking measures at the bottom, middle, and top of the spinning tube.

High temp is THE way to go for accelerated chemical stability but not necessarily for a physical one.

I’m still confused why exactly 60°C or rather what you’d like to simulate therewith. 60°C ain’t a condition an emulsion commonly experiences unless you’re planning a Venus landing with it or work in the drilling business…

[Pharma]

Hydrogen peroxide solubilises (i.e. cleans) the same things as water. Fats ain’t water soluble but partially soluble in isopropanol.

Ammonia is sometimes used to remove grease but given its smell you might opt for alternatives.

[Pharma]

As far as I know, polarity index starts at a 0 (for super nonpolar compounds such as pentane) and goes up to very polar compounds such as water with a 9.

Another value used to determine polarity is dipole moment.

I wonder what numbers you are using? Is it even an SI unit?

[Pharma]

DPG is not an ‘official’ preservative but part of certain preservative blends. Many compounds similar to DPG do show a certain degree of preservation at least due to their water-binding activity and/or function as booster for other preservatives.