The Exilva Blog

The last few years have seen a very fast increase in the use of biologicals and biocontrol agents in crop protection and agricultural products as part of the shift towards more sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture.

Quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) are a group of cationic antimicrobials widely used for numerous industrial and pharmaceutical purposes. They are disinfectant chemicals commonly used in disinfectant wipes, sprays and household cleaners. They are very popular these days as they allow products to claim to be antibacterial and are part of many EPA listed products with emerging viral pathogens and human coronavirus (Covid-19) claims.

Hydroalcoholic hand sanitizers are the best option to keep up your hand hygiene when soap and water are not accessible. They are one of the most used and needed products these days. If you are considering formulating a hand sanitizer, read about how you can use Exilva Microfibrillated Cellulose, a biobased material, to structure and thicken your formulations as well as provide a non-tacky feel.

Surfactants are present in most consumer products. The most familiar examples are shampoos, hand wash products and cleaning products in general. Switching to sulfate free surfactants improves the environmental profile, but can be a challenge. Let me show you a way to this.

I will demonstrate that one can use cellulose fibrils to thicken and stabilize formulations with foam forming surfactants. The most important point to remember when preparing such formulations is to avoid foam formation during the incorporation step of surfactants with the cellulose fibrils.

When most people were talking about the brutal polar vortex that hit Chicago earlier this year, I am sure many were looking for ways to best protect the products they are producing, transporting, storing and using from being destroyed by freezing. In this blog post, I will briefly mention a few tips on how to make products freeze-thaw stable such that they can be used in winter harsh areas.

Many reasons can lead to unstable formulations when you first start testing a new formulation or a new ingredient. Some are due to non-optimized use of ingredients such as stabilizers and others are due to formulation processing or incompatibilities. Sounds familiar? We might have good news for you.

Everyday life is full of formulations containing solid particles, pigments, beads or fillers. Depending on the application, the formulations may have a varying amount of solids. Common challenges with high solid content formulations are the settling of heavy particles or the floating of lighter ones. Therefore, it is important to ensure the stability of the solids suspended in a formulation. Especially those with high particle loading such as a coating formulation with matting agents, UV filters and other solids.

Cellulose fibrils are most often supplied as readily activated water suspensions. This maintains the product’s performance and makes it easy to incorporate into a formulation. It however brings up questions about the microbial stability of the suspension over time. Is the robustness of Cellulose fibrils enough in this case?

There are many different solutions for reducing wrinkles and age marks on the skin. These range from long term permanent treatments of the skin to formulations that have immediate, temporary and only optical effects on the skin. In most formulations and products, a combination of a permanent solution with an immediate effect is desired.