26 FUNCTIONAL INGREDIENTS


Tunable biosurfactants for global challenges


Morgan Loflin, Denis Ontumi, Ana Echaniz – Ruby Bio


Surfactants are an essential component of a wide variety of formulations across personal care, home care, cosmetics, and industrial applications. They are prevalent in the personal care products we choose and even the packaged goods we eat. For the last 20 years, the surfactant industry


has championed sustainable efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions by shifting the production of surfactants from petrochemicals to bio-based alternatives derived from plant-based feedstocks such as palm oil and manufacturing by chemical catalysis. However, the rapid increase in demand


for vegetable oils coupled with deforestation concerns have challenged the palm oil industry, and the presence of unwanted contaminants in ingredients creates risks for both suppliers and brands. These efforts to improve ingredient options have been good enough for a time, but the age of chemistry alone is looking to biology to offer better ingredient options. Biosurfactants are quickly taking centre-stage as a big innovative jump into the solutions needed for the future.


Surfactants 101 The word surfactant is a portmanteau - or linguistic blend - of the words ‘surface active agent’. This class of ingredients simply aligns polar and non-polar interfaces to ease tensions between the two. There is a multitude of ingredient


properties or functions that fall under this classification such as anti-foaming, water in oil emulsification, wetting agents, dispersants, oil in water emulsification, foaming, detergency, and solubilization. The hydrophobic lipophilic balance (or HLB, see Figure 1) can predict the specific properties a surfactant will serve in your formulation. This can be a helpful tool in determining ingredient choice and dose when building a new formulation, especially emulsification.1


Feedstock and regulatory challenges, what is wrong with current surfactants? Now, let us consider the surfactant landscape with two major trends, feedstock shifts and global regulatory concerns. Petrochemical based surfactants have been slowly moving away from fossil oil to source the hydrophobic carbon chains to renewable, naturally derived feedstocks, such as tropical tree oil (Figure 2),


PERSONAL CARE July 2024


rapeseed oil (Figure 3), and even soybean oil. Figure 4 demonstrates the spike in global


production as a function of demand for these plant-based oils, which will continue expanding with global population growth and consumerism. Even more compelling is the vast efficiency difference shown in Figure 5 between palm kernel oil and all other vegetal-based oils, shown in the study conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2023.6


Based on this data, one could conclude that shifting from palm oil to another oil source is not an efficient choice. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) works diligently to address deforestation, geopolitical, and social challenges with palm-based feedstock, creating positive progress. However, the recent experiences with supply chain challenges for regionally bound items during the pandemic have caused heightened awareness among brands and product companies as they seek more viable options with better global availability. Furthermore, the recent destocking of


personal care ingredients has exposed weaknesses in global supply chains, deepening the imperative for supply chain security and resilience across markets for raw materials and formulations. There seems to be no simple answer to surfactant’s dependency on oil feedstocks. The second trend impacting surfactants


is the regulatory concerns, like 1,4-dioxane contamination. 1,4-dioxane is an undesirable byproduct of the manufacturing process of


HLB scale of typical ATLAS emulsifiers


20 TWEEN 20


TWEEN 40 TWEEN 80 TWEEN 60


TWEEN 21 10


TWEEN 85 TWEEN 65 TWEEN 81 TWEEN 61


SPAN 20 SPAN 40


SPAN 60 SPAN 80


SPAN 65 SPAN 85


0 Figure 1: Hydrophobic lipophilic balance scale1


ingredients such as sodium laurel ether sulfate (SLES), ethoxylated surfactants, some emollients, and ingredients produced by PEGylation. According to the Center for Disease Control


(CDC), 1,4-dioxane is listed in the Toxic Substance Portal with the statement, ‘The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) considers 1,4-dioxane as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen. The EPA


www.personalcaremagazine.com


O/W Emulsifying (8-16)


Wetting & spreading agents (7-9)


W/O Eulsifying (3-6)


Antifoaming agents (2-3)


Solubilizing agents (15-18)


Detergents (13-15)


lipophilic


hydrophilic


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