Mastering clean beauty formulation challenges

Sonneborn has led the personal care industry for over 100 years in producing the highest quality petrolatum emollients. The emollient technologies used by many companies today were developed by scientists at Sonneborn, either as a direct response to industry demands, or as proactive projects by the Sonneborn Development Center anticipating future needs. In 2007, the need for a 100% plant-based emollient that performed as a petrolatum was born. From our first day, to today, our team of technical experts are committed to meeting the Clean Beauty formulation challenges in the 21st Century.

A petrolatum is a continuum of hydrocarbon isomers of approximately carbon 20 up to carbon 120. Its composition will change depending on the performance, application, or sensory experience desired by a product formulator. There are literally thousands of combinations of linear, cyclic, or branched carbon chains to create a petrolatum to meet these needs. This is where the challenge started. Given this complexity, how can we create a stable, efficacious, and pleasing all-natural emollient that mimics the performance of petrolatum? Our experience and knowledge of the chemistry and physical parameters of petrolatum were critical to overcome the challenges, and develop an all-natural plantbased emollient that does indeed perform as a petrolatum in a formulation and in the neat form. 

Along the development path, there were numerous challenges to formulating an allnatural emollient. All plant-based materials have a finite, defined carbon distribution that could limit the sensory experience. Because of this finite carbon distribution, natural products do not form a fully stable crystalline structure in the solid form without prescribed thermodynamic systems. One could see undesirable polymorphic behaviour in the product or in the finished formulation itself. All triglycerides and fats typically have three crystalline forms: alpha (α), Beta Primed (β’) and Beta (β).