Overcoming Agitation Challenges in Cold Pearl Surfactant Blends

Pearlescent additives have been used for centuries to impart an iridescent quality to a wide range of products including cosmetic, home care, and personal care formulations. Currently, the state of the art technology choice for delivering shine and opacity to a formulation is cold pearl surfactant blends. These blends are flowable, concentrated dispersions of waxy-crystalline structures in an aqueous surfactant matrix, providing a highly flexible and economical solution to appearance enhancement needs. The production of high-quality cold pearl blends presents varied and unique agitation challenges at each stage of the manufacturing process: production must alternately balance the processing demands presented by emulsion formation, non-Newtonian fluid flow, heat transfer and growth of the desired crystal structure.

This presentation will provide background on the key drivers of cold pearl surfactant blend quality, discuss current manufacturing process limitations, and include a review of an agitation design intended to provide a more complete solution to the challenges posed by pearlescent blends. Specific examples of the alternative agitation design at pilot and at industrial scale will be reviewed to illustrate the benefits of a purpose-built mixing arrangement.