Personal Care Industry | SLES
The dispersion of SLES is a crucial requirement in the manufacture of numerous consumer products. Sonic’s Sonolator Homogenizer is a unique answer for diluting and dispersing SLES into water to eliminate fish eye appearance and save on processing time.
SLES 70 is a very common ingredient in the personal care products and is used as the soap and surfactant in shampoo, body wash, conditioner, liquid soap, liquid detergents, and more. SLES 70 needs to be diluted prior to final use and to purchase the material in a pre-diluted state is costly. We commonly see the material diluted down to between 17.5% and 28%. The issue with diluting is that you can be left with fish eyes, or globules, of undispersed SLES. Most manufacturers place water and SLES into a mixing tank at the proper ratio and mix a finite amount for some period of time until the material is adequately dispersed. This is less than ideal because:
- It takes too long
- It requires material transfers to tank where air can be introduced
- It requires a costly and space-consuming batch mixing tank
- It requires intense mixing in the tank or re-circulation out of tank to get to a final mix
- It uses mechanical shear that imparts heat
Dual-Feed Process for Dispersing and Diluting SLES
Rather than transfer your bulk materials to a cumbersome batch tank, Sonic has invented a unique Dual-Feed Sonolator process for the dispersion of SLES whereby your bulk SLES 70 and water are metered inline at proper ratio into our patented mixing chamber, which subjects the 2 streams to controlled pressure, fluid acceleration and cavitation to efficiently disperse the SLES instantaneously. Both materials are metered at room temperature and dispersed uniformly inline without use of a bulky tank or clunky mechanical shear mixer or agitator. Not having to transfer the viscous SLES 70 material to a bulk tank also eliminates the introduction of air; air typically gets entrained in, or drawn into, the product when the more viscous SLES is combined with water in an open tank. Sonic has designed and fabricated a number of Dual-Feed SLES Homogenizing skids (seen on left) that contain the PD pumps and mass flow meters used for taking material from their sources and dispersing & diluting them on an On Demand basis. Download the Download our SLES Application White Paper here.
Benefits of a Dual-Feed Dispersion and Dilution Process
- No Batch or Mixing Tank required
- Meter Direct from Bulk storage
- Eliminate Air Entrainment
- Controlled Dispersion w/o Mechanical Shear
- Making On Demand Reduces Waste
- Making On Demand Increases Flexibility