Emulsifiers / Co-Emulsifiers

-Emulsifiers: An emulsion, more commonly known as a cream, lotion, ointment, etc is basically a combination of oils or oily ingredients and water or aqueous ingredients. But how can this be, when we all know that oil and water “don’t mix”? Answer: Emulsifiers. The interfacial tension between the internal and external phases must be lowered to allow for the formation of droplets. To create this emulsion, we add emulsifiers /surfactants. These surfactants (SURFace ACTive AgeNTS) have a lypophillic (oil-loving) tail that can partition (or line up) into the oil (droplet) phase while their hydrophilic (water-loving) heads line up into the water phase. Their tail should be at least 14 carbons long for them to be considered "good" emulsifiers, as opposed to surfactants only. Thus, all emulsifiers can be considered to be surfactants, but not all surfactants are emulsifiers (in the cosmetic sense of the word). Surfactants are characterized according to the "balance" between the hydrophilic ("water-loving") and lipophilic ("oil-loving") portions of their molecules. The hydrophilic-lipophilic balance (HLB) number indicates the polarity of the molecules in an arbitrary range of 1-40, with the most commonly used emulsifiers having a value between 1 and 20. The HLB number increases with increasing hydrophilicity. According to the HLB number, surfactants may be utilized for different purposes:

TDF’s selection of self-emulsifying blends make emulsion creation child’s play. Or, for those more adventurous formulators, choose any combination of our single emulsifiers for use with The HLB System or The Lactylate Index. Visit our Library for more information. All these fine materials are vegetable derived.