High Water Cleansing Bars Using Inorganic Salts and Starch
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Solution Overview
Problem
High water content bar compositions face challenges in maintaining stability and water retention, making it difficult to produce a bar composition that is both efficient and suitable for consumer use.
Innovation Solution
Incorporating inorganic salts such as sodium tripolyphosphate, magnesium salts, and carbohydrate structurants like raw or pregelatinized starch, along with optional free fatty acids and synthetic surfactants, to maintain a high water content and enhance skin feel and lathering properties, while using a milling process to produce the bar composition.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If high water content is incorporated in bar composition to improve formulation efficiency and skin feel, then product stability and water retention deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces inorganic salts (sodium tripolyphosphate, magnesium salts, tetrasodium pyrophosphate) and carbohydrate structurants (raw starch, pregelatinized starch) as intermediary substances that mediate between water and soap molecules. These intermediaries form hydrates and complexes that bind water molecules, preventing their evaporation and maintaining high water content (20-60% by weight) while ensuring product stability and preventing deterioration.
2Ease of manufacture
If high water content is incorporated in bar composition to improve formulation efficiency, then water retention and product integrity worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the physical and chemical parameters of water by incorporating it into hydrate structures and molecular complexes with inorganic salts and carbohydrate structurants. This parameter change transforms free water into bound water, maintaining high water content (20-60% by weight) for formulation efficiency while ensuring water retention through the stable hydrate and complex structures that prevent water loss.
3Quantity of substance
If inorganic salts and carbohydrate structurants are added to maintain water content, then bar composition complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs inorganic salts and carbohydrate structurants that perform multiple functions simultaneously: they bind water molecules to maintain high water content, form stable hydrates and complexes to ensure product stability, improve skin feel through enhanced moisturizing, and provide lathering properties. This multi-functionality justifies the increased compositional complexity by delivering multiple benefits from a unified set of ingredients.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The solution effectively maintains a high water content in the bar composition, ensuring stability and improved consumer experience through enhanced skin feel and lathering, as measured by a Water Activity (Aw) of less than 0.85, which prevents water loss and maintains product integrity.
Implementation Method 1
The inorganic salt helps to maintain the relatively high level of water in the bar composition... The bar composition preferably further comprises a carbohydrate structurant, such as raw starch or pregelatinized starch, which can tend to further aid in maintaining the relatively high level of water in the bar composition
Implementation Method 2
Incorporating inorganic salts such as sodium tripolyphosphate, magnesium salts, and carbohydrate structurants like raw or pregelatinized starch... to maintain a high water content
Implementation Method 3
Both the refiner and the mill subject the soap to compression and an intense shearing action which tend to orient the soap crystals and convert the soap largely to the beta-phase
Implementation Method 4
The drying step is typically necessary to remove the 'gummy' texture and excessive pliability of the soap mass which exist typically at higher moisture levels... drying to from about 10% to about 14% moisture is necessary
Data Source
AI summary
Cleansing bar compositions having high water content comprise: (a) at least about 15%, by weight of the composition, of water; (b) from about 40% to about 84%, by weight of the composition, of soap; and (c) from about 1% to about 15%, by weight of the composition, of inorganic salt. The bar compositions further comprise a component selected from the group consisting of carbohydrate structurant, free fatty acid, synthetic surfactants, and mixtures thereof. The bar compositions preferably have a Water Activity ("Aw") of less than about 0.95, preferably less than about 0.90, and more preferably less than about 0.85. The bar compositions are preferably manufactured by a milling process.