The Outstanding Performance of IMMAY Mixers in SLES Dilution

IMMAY Mixer Excels in SLES Dilution

In the personal care industry, sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES) is a widely used anionic surfactant used in a variety of products such as shampoo, shower gel and skin care products due to its excellent cleaning, emulsifying and foaming properties. However, SLES needs to be precisely diluted during processing to achieve ideal performance and safety.

Challenges of SLES Dilution

SLES is typically supplied in a "high active" concentration of 65% to 70%, which helps reduce transportation and storage costs. However, in actual production, it needs to be diluted to a concentration of about 25% to 28% for use in personal care products. This process is not easy because SLES goes through a "transition phase" during dilution, during which it forms a difficult-to-handle gel with extremely high viscosity that most conventional mixing equipment cannot effectively handle.

Even in the non-transition phase, the viscosity of some formulations may exceed the handling capabilities of conventional mixers and centrifugal pumps. Additionally, when handling highly active surfactants, manufacturers must be careful to avoid incorporating air into the mixture, as the incorporation of air can significantly increase viscosity, resulting in poor mixing. Other issues such as stratification and long processing times can also occur when using conventional agitators to dilute SLES, which not only affect production efficiency but also lead to unstable product quality.

Introduction of IMMAY High Shear Mixer

To address the above issues, an international company based in Europe introduced an IMMAY high shear mixer, a decision that completely changed their SLES dilution process. Prior to adopting the IMMAY mixer, the company used conventional agitators, which had many shortcomings when diluting SLES. Due to the inefficient mixing of the agitator, the processing time was too long and the concentration of SLES could not be quickly reduced during the transition phase, resulting in a viscous paste that often resulted in not only waste of material, but also extended the time of the entire production process because the process needed to be restarted.

Even when the agitator and the pump used for circulation were able to dilute the SLES concentration to a workable percentage, stratification would occur in the mixture due to the viscosity difference between SLES and water. This means that the particles of the surfactant are not fully diluted or only partially diluted in the mixture, requiring further filtration, which undoubtedly increases the processing time. The end result is poor product quality and inconsistency between batches.

Advantages and Applications of IMMAY High Shear Mixers

The introduction of IMMAY high shear mixers has brought revolutionary changes to the company. Diluting highly active surfactants, such as SLES, is best done using high shear inline mixers. In this process, deionized pure water filtered by an industrial reverse osmosis water treatment machine is injected into the mixing vessel and pumped from the bottom back to the mixing tank by IMMAY's circulation system for circulation. The highly active surfactant is quickly sucked into the water flow after entering the inline mixer. The rotor/stator workhead of the mixer ensures uniform mixing, and the mixture is then circulated back to the mixing vessel. This processing method not only speeds up the mixing time, but also ensures that the SLES remains in a fluid state throughout the process, avoiding the occurrence of a gel stage.

Before purchasing a series of IMMAY industrial inline mixers, the company tested the process using an IMMAY laboratory small mixer. SLES can be diluted directly from 70% to the required 27% concentration with a small laboratory mixer, completely skipping the difficult transition stage. Since IMMAY mixers have the same fine tolerances and universal workhead geometry, the results achieved in the laboratory can be easily scaled up to larger inline mixers without any adjustments to the formulation.

Global promotion and application of IMMAY mixers

By using IMMAY inline mixers as standard equipment for SLES dilution, your company will gain the following significant advantages:

1. Fast mixing ability: IMMAY inline mixers are able to quickly mix water and surfactants evenly, even if their viscosities vary greatly.

2. Significantly shorten processing time: The time of the entire production process has been significantly reduced, improving production efficiency.

3. Pumping high viscosity formula: The pumping action of the inline mixer is able to handle higher viscosity formulas and circulate the product back into the container without the need for additional pumping equipment.

4. Closed system operation: The entire operation process is carried out in a closed system, effectively eliminating the risk of air mixing and ensuring the quality of the mixture.

5. Advantages of large-scale production: When processing large batches of products, the dilution cycle can be started during the water injection process, further shortening the processing time.

In short, the introduction of IMMAY high shear mixer can not only solve the problems encountered by your company in the SLES dilution process, but also bring your company higher efficiency, more stable quality and stronger market competitiveness in the production of personal care products.