Sulfate-free or not sulfate-free? That is the question when customers are studying the INCI list of personal care products and find ingredients like surfactants based on sulfoacetates or sulfosuccinates. In fact, the discussion linked to that question is rather fruitless but one by one….
Conversations with customers show that the demand for sulfate-free cleansing products is growing more and more. Surfactant producers follow this trend and increasingly aim to develop sulfate-free surfactants. Additionally, already existing suitable products are claimed as sulfatefree. Of course there is no question that sulfur-free surfactants like for instance the mild and natural based Zschimmer & Schwarz Protelan- and Sebumol-Types (hydrophilic groups: amino acids or their derivatives and polyglycerol)1 are sulfatefree.
In discussions, the clarity in answering the question “sulfate-free or not sulfatefree?” disappears often in that moment when sulfur-containing surfactants like sulfonates come into play. Therefore, in the following we will focus on sulfoacetates and sulfosuccinates as prominent representatives of sulfonate surfactants used in personal care applications. The perspectives that we take at first are driven by the chemistry followed by the application.
Chemical perspective
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