The development of a 100% vegan hair structurizer

Abstract

For long, it has been popular to change the appearance of your hair by making it straight or curly. This change can be made more lasting by doing a perming treatment. These treatments were very popular a few decades ago, but the interest is not as big anymore.

A perming treatment makes the hair curly or straight by using formulations with strong chemicals, such as reducing and oxidizing agents. Reducing agents cleaves the disulphide bonds in the hair fibre and oxidizing agents rebuild the bonds after the hair has been formed into the desired shape. Different reducing agents can be used, and some are more popular than others for various reasons. In this master thesis a sulphite was used to develop a new perming lotion since sulphites give more relaxed curls and less odour during the production and treatment.

All the constructed recipes were tried at so-called beauty heads and the results where then evaluated by checking how many washings it took before the curls got relaxed. All recipes were prepared and tried one by one so that the next recipe could take the problems present in the previous one into account.

The aim with the new perming products was that they should be 100% vegan, not give any unpleasant odour and give a more modern look on the curls.

Apart from the sulphite was butyrolactonethiol tried, but this chemical was so expensive that only one trial was completed.

The development of the new perming products was done by investigating how much reducing agent that should be used to give the most optimal reducing strength and to find a suitable pH of the formulation. The pH is crucial in perming products that contains sulphites since the dominating ion from the dissolved reducing agent varies with pH. The recipes were developed in two steps. The first one only contained the most necessary chemicals, reducing agents, solvent and buffer. Chemicals such as humectants, antistatic and hair conditioning agents, perfume and perfume solvent where added first when a suitable base had been found in a second step.

Low reducing strength and a formulation pH of 7 were found to give the most lasting curls. Since even stronger curls wanted to be achieved was cysteamine hydrochloride added in small amounts to support the main reducing agents, sodium metabisulfite.

The development of a neutralization lotion for the after treatment was also initiated since the after treatment is the formulation that makes the curls permanent. However, this formulation needs much more development work and optimization to yield the wanted effect.

Popular Abstract

Changing the appearance of the hair has for long been very popular. It is nowadays done temporary by using a flatiron or a hair curler. Some years ago, it was very popular to do hair treatments that gave a more permanent result. However, this is not the case anymore and these perming treatments are often associated with words as old and harmful.
The aim with this master thesis was to develop a formulation that could be used to make hair permanent curly, a perming lotion. This lotion had to be 100% vegan, free from sulphate and parabens and if possible without any ammonia. The work was done in collaboration with a Swedish hair care company that also wanted the formulation to be odourless.

The company wanted to try to make perming treatments more popular again. This by developing a perming lotion that gave a more modern look and that does not give any odour in the hair after the treatment when the hair gets wet.

A basic perming lotion that fulfilled all these demands and wishes was made by using sodium metabisulfite as a main ingredient. Sodium metabisulfite works as a reducing agent and thereby cleaves the disulphide bonds present in the hair. This basic perming lotion gave curls that lasted some washings when testing the formulation at beauty heads. However, the curls got relaxed already after one wash when adding chemicals that gives more moisture to the hair and when adding perfume.

More than one formulation is used to give curly hair when performing a perming treatment. The first formulation that is applied is called perming lotion and is responsible for breaking the disulphide bonds in the hair. The next formulation is called neutralization lotion and contains an oxidizing agent. This oxidizing agent rebuilds the disulphide bonds in a new way which makes permanent curls.

In this master thesis where the main focus on the perming lotion. There is therefore a chance that the result after the perming treatments done during the trials could have lasted longer if a better neutralization lotion was used.

The pH of the formulation matters much when working with perms. A perming lotion can have different pH depending on which chemical used but it is preferred to use an alkali pH since this will cause the hair cuticle to swell and open up. This will make it easier for the reducing agent to penetrate the hair and preform its task. The present dominated ion when sodium metabisulfite is dissolved are also pH dependent. The result could therefore be different when having a low pH and much bisulphite ions or a higher pH and much sulphite ions.

The after treatment and neutralization lotion should aid the cleansing of the perming lotion and start to close the cuticle again to avoid hair damages. These formulations should therefore have an acidic pH.

• author: Erlandsson, Ellinor
• supervisor: Marie Wahlgren; Diana Marku
• organization: Food Technology and Nutrition (M.Sc.)
• course: KLGM15 20181
• year: 2018
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Technology and Engineering
• keywords: Product development, hair care, formulations, chemistry, pharmaceutical technology, läkemedelsteknologi
• language: English
• id: 8952029
• date added to LUP: 2018-06-27 15:31:42
• date last changed: 2018-06-27 15:31:42