Need bubble bath recipe please!

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The stable mountain of bubbles in commercial baths come from sulfates. Fact is, you can't have those kind of bubbles without them.
Not true. There are lots of materials that can produce mountains of bubbles without sulfates. Some of them are sulfonates, true, but there are still lots of very effective foaming agents that aren't either.
 
Coconut oil is suppose to cause large fluffy bubbles in soap. Try some Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate (SLSA) (derived from coconut and palm oil) to make bigger better bubbles perhaps??
 
Following.. Have yet to find a non sulfate way to make bubbles that last more than a few minutes.
Eta: for now we use a Castile liquid soap for bubbles. :) but I'd like to get away from it if possible.
 
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i have a liquid soap book checked out from the library that has some bubble bath recipes. I'll have to check that and post some information here later. I'm sure it can be done.
 
Try some Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate (SLSA) (derived from coconut and palm oil) to make bigger better bubbles perhaps??
If I had a choice, I'd pick disodium lauryl sulfosuccinate (SLSS) over sodium lauryl sulfoacetate (SLSA). They're both sulfonate esters, they're both of fairly low solubility, so hard to formulate in liquids, but non-hygroscopic so easy to formulate in solids. But SLSS is a little milder than SLSA.

Here's SLSA's structure:

fatty-OOC-CH2SO3Na

SLSS is a mixture of:

fatty-OOC-CH2CHCH(COONa)SO3Na
and
fatty-OOC-CH2CH(SO3Na)CH2COONa

We don't know why, but it seems that having two ionized or ionizable groups on the end of the molecule (as SLSS does) make it more skin- and eye-friendly than having one (as soap & SLSA do).
 
Hi Robert, having played with both I find the bubbles from slsa better. Would you suggest using slss with another surfectant? What would you recommend? Thanks
 
If I had a choice, I'd pick disodium lauryl sulfosuccinate (SLSS) over sodium lauryl sulfoacetate (SLSA). They're both sulfonate esters, they're both of fairly low solubility, so hard to formulate in liquids, but non-hygroscopic so easy to formulate in solids. But SLSS is a little milder than SLSA.

I learned something new! Thank you Robert!
 
Hi Robert, having played with both I find the bubbles from slsa better. Would you suggest using slss with another surfectant? What would you recommend? Thanks
These things are matters of taste. SLSA makes bigger bubbles than SLSS, which tends to make finer, creamier foam. But I wouldn't use either one without a foam stabilizer.

Once I was able to get a sample from Henkel of cocamidopropyl betaine "versplucht" (spray dried), which actually was a gummy mass in a jar, but I was able to mix it with SLSS powder to make a tablet form bath foam that would preferably be hung in a cage-like apparatus (of which I fashioned one out of fiberglass window screen and wire) under the faucet to dissolve.

Hmm...now I realize the thread drifted into specifically solid formulations by my assumption, when I see that wasn't all that was originally asked for. For a liquid version, I used diammonium lauryl sulfosuccinate (NLSS) solution and solutions of alkamidopropyl betaines, plus other anionic surfactants. You can get a fair idea from my U.S. pat. 5,336,446.

The prod'n formula I settled on was a mixture of:

4 volumes diammonium lauryl sulfosuccinate 40% (nominal) solution
3 vols. lauramidopropyl betaine 35% solids (~30% actives) solution
2 vols. disodium laureth-3 sulfosuccinate 40% (nominal) solution

However, instead of just lauramidopropyl betaine I would've preferred to use a 2:1 or 3:2 mixture of that and palmitamidopropyl betaine, which gave more cottony foam and was more skin softening in sample batches, but I couldn't obtain that material in small enough quantities to make a small prod'n run.

The higher the ratio of laureth to lauryl sulfosuccinate, the bigger and more persistent the bubbles, but the less lathery the foam quality. Same for the ratio of betaine to sulfosuccinates, although less of a response for the change in ratio.

The whole reason I got into this was to make a bubble bath a friend's child (one of 3 who at that time bathed together) could tolerate for long periods and in large amounts without vulvovaginitis. I then tried it out on others who'd had urinary or genital irrit'n from soaps, bath foams, etc. I never had commercial success, though. I was hoping it'd replace the formula of Mr. Bubble, for instance. After my patent expired, it became the basis for the foaming component of the current Calgon bubble bath powder! So no money for me.
 
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