We have been playing with the craze of the decade these last few weeks. You have perhaps heard about the award winning innovative company that upcycles coffee waste: Kaffe Bueno
One of their most recent products is a surfactant derived from coffee. As a curious formulator I badly wanted to test this ingredient and after months of waiting we finally received a sample of the surfactant. It is called KLEANSTANT® with the INCI name: Potassium caffeate and the divine scent of coffee
So as the name reveals this is in reality a saponified coffee oil (like a liquid soap) and has a very high pH on its own (11,5-12,0)
Since it is a soap, what happens when you reduce its pH in a mild cleansing formulation? You guess it, it sediments. As soon as you reduce the pH (even to a high pH of 8) it will sediment which is quite in the nature of soap.
This means, you can either prepare cleansing products with a very high pH (use this ingredient as a liquid soap) or blend it with other surfactants and solubilizers if you want to reduce the pH.
The following photo depicts one of our basic experiments.
The sample on the left is the surfactant diluted in water. The sample in the middle is the diluted sample of the surfactant with a slightly reduced pH. As you see the turbidity increases and the fatty acids precipitate as the pH is reduced. The sample on the right is the surfactant solubilized in another surfactant (Caprylyl/capryl glucoside) and the pH is happily reduced to 5.
We have even made a shower gel with this surfactant (with a neutral pH)
which turned out quite nice.
We are still working to figure out if we add this ingredient to our portfolio but I wanted to give you some information in case you have heard or read about it and are curious to know how it works.
