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Carboxylates are produced by the alkaline hydrolysis or saponification of animal or vegetable fats and result from the neutralization of fatty acids. They are extremely soluble in water up to C18 (or 18 carbons), and are insoluble over C20. If you use an unsaturated oil or butter to produce these surfactants, you might see some...
I know there’s a lot of misunderstanding about surfactants – especially about SLS – so here’s a way of figuring out what type of surfactant you have! Sodium lauryl sulfate Okay, the sodium part is the cationic or positively charged ion in this surfactant. The lauryl part indicates which fatty acid was used to make...
As I’m writing this series of posts on surfactants, there are a few things to consider when formulating… foaming lathering bubbling good skin or hair feel substantitive to skin or hair how it performs in hard water foamy resistance to soap and/or sebum how to thicken it These qualities will make it clear which one...
What are micelles? They are defined as “an aggregate of surfactant molecules dispersed in a liquid colloid”. So what’s a colloid? It is a type of mixture in which one substance is evenly dispersed throughout another. There’s generally two phases – the dispersed or internal phase and the continuous phase. In the case of oil-in-water...
I wanted to write a few posts about creating cleansers for the different skin types, then I realized that I hadn’t done posts on surfactants for a while. I’ve got some basic stuff from last year, but I thought a more in depth series of posts on the various surfactants we use in our creations...