How To Get Rid of Agglomerations in Cosmetics

From the lab at Torrey Hills Technologies


Cosmetic Overview

Cosmetics are broadly classified into basic types such as lotions, creams, foundations, lipsticks, rouges, eyeliners, mascaras, eye shadows, eyebrow pencils etc.. The cosmetic should exhibit aesthetic qualities such as the color, which can be either a transparent or opaque and shouldn’t deteriorate in quality over time. 

The Makeup of Makeup
Makeup composition mainly includes pigment, fatty binder, and filler. Cosmetic products must be homogeneous and stable during the application. Basically, the pigment raw material has a relatively large and irregular particle. The pigment is usually ground in a ball mill to reduce the pigment particle size. In this step, the pigment can go down to about 10-15 microns. However, a reagglomeration of the various particles is observed after the above grinding and drying. Due to the agglomeration, the compositions are visually unappealing, often unstable, and cover poorly. Therefore, pigments and other ingredients in the cosmetic need to be further ground through a milling apparatus to form a homogeneous and finely dispersed paste the ideal pigment particle size should be in 10-30 nm.

Dispersion

There are many different ways to mix raw cosmetic material, such as Sand Mills, Colloid Mills, and Three Roll Mills. Each works differently but all subject the mixture to sheer force.

Sand Mills

Sand Mills are vertical cylinders filled with grinding media, operate on the principle that small mill media stir rapidly in the presence of the pigment slurry. Dispersion takes place as a result of pigment shearing as it rises through shaft impeller. Dispersion of the pigment depends strongly on the media size. Therefore, the use of sand mills makes it difficult to decrease the particle size to the nano range.

Colloid mill

The Colloid mill uses stone grinding discs. The upper stone is stationary and the lower stone is rotating fast at speeds up to 3600 revs per minute. The low viscosity slurry is fed into the center of the static top stone by gravity and is passed between the two stones by centrifugal force, where it is subjected to extreme turbulence and shear forces to affect the dispersion. Colloid mill can reach the very fine particle size but with a limitation on the size of batch material since it is small. 

Three-Roll Mills

Three-roll mill consists of three rollers which are made from chilled steel or granite, run parallel to each other, and each one rotates at a different speed. Additionally, each contact face passes in the opposite direction to the adjacent roller. The gap between them, called the nip, can be adjusted. The mill base is fed into the nip between rollers one and two and the final product is taken from roller three by means of a scraper bar. Among these mills, the three-roll mill is preferred since all paste compositions are subject to the sheer force when they go through the gap. Therefore, the more homogenous structure can be reached by this process. The particle size could go down to nanosize range. The gap between the rolls may be adjusted to control the fines of dispersion. The loading capacity could be easily adjusted through the machine design.

Read More: Click Here
See a Three Roll Mill in Action: Click Here

Cultured Meat

How Torrey Hills Technologies Shaking Incubator is Helping for a Sustainable World

       According to Hamptons Creek, a Silicon Valley startup, working on cellular agriculture products, the production of meat and seafood around the globe will double to 1.2 trillion pounds by 2050 if we keep consuming at our current rate. However, our planet is not able to support the supplies that the animal production industry requires for example water, fertilizer, fuel, and pesticides. By 2050 Earth’s population will be approximately 9 billion and meat consumption is estimated to rise 70% in the next three decades – the solution must lie in technology – lab-grown meats can help offset the environmental damages for future generations.

A campaign such as Meatless Mondays, Be Vegetarian or Go Vegan have become more and more frequent and people are aware of meat nutrition and future consequences. Now there is a sustainable revolutionized food option: the clean meat industry where meat is made from cells instead of lives, or confined animals. All is possible, to produce milk without cows and nuggets without chickens. There are many startups working in this new industry in a job that is called digital biology or synthetic biology – it converts the genes of yeast cells in a vitro meat process to generate milk but with no cows.

Here is how

      The process starts taking some cells from the muscle of an animal with a small biopsy while they're under anesthesia. These cells are called “myosatellite” cells which are the stem cell of muscles and have the function to generate a new muscle tissue when the muscle becomes injured. Producing clean meat is also known as cultured meat, comes essentially from stem cells. The same thing that occurs inside an animal, the cells will proliferate when placed for growth. What they use to grow this meat is called a shaking incubator. When they are in action they make the whole process turn into future clean meat. All of this from a small sample cell that proliferates until there are trillions of cells, just from one sample it is possible to produce 800 million strands of muscles tissue and make around 80,000 quarter pounders. The clean meat is ready when all these fibers are layered together. It is possible to process using the same food methods, for example, a grinder to make ground beef. There are no antibiotics, genetic modification, environmental damages and animal slaughter which comes with traditional meat production. The cells are doing the same work that they would normally do inside the animals but with technology to help in favor of a better future for us.

Click Here to learn more about shaking incubators.

Let Entrepreneurs Do More Than Dream

... And understand why we are giving away a T50 Ointment Mill. 

Starting up a business is getting harder. Young entrepreneurs who lack in real world business tactics oftentimes face various challenges and need more supports from successful entrepreneurs. The CEO of my company, Ken Kuang, recently published an article in the Wall Street Journal about this critical issue and has received overwhelmingly positive feedback (Read more:http://on.wsj.com/1hJtNKo).

He talked about the disbanding of the Moxie Center at UC San Diego, which was designed to fund students and help them pursue their early entrepreneur dreams. In his opinion, the Moxie Center failed to teach its budding entrepreneurs the two most basic survival skills for startups: understanding the concept of “win-win” and how to forecast profits and losses. Besides seeing it as huge regret, he has revealed the fundamental reason of Moxie’s downfall. It was due to a poor business model embedded with no returns on investment and lack of start-up support.

Here, we are living by his ideals. And here is how we decided to help those looking to start up a compounding pharmacy or those looking to find the right tool for their next big idea. Torrey Hills Technologies is giving away a free T50 ointment mill in September. Businesses can easily participate by clicking this webpage http://www.threerollmill.com/ointmentmillgiveaway.html, and simply fill in four multiple choices questions by September 14.

You may think to yourself “how is this a return on investment?”  By giving away this award-winning machine to our winner, we can help them with their very first step of pursuing their dreams of starting up a business. When they grow, we welcome them to turn to us for future needs. The initiative also helps build a strong bond between us and the pharmacy compounding community. That would be our return on investment. Overall, it is up to the lucky entrepreneur that wins this machine to decide what they do or if they succeed, but we are here to help give them the seeds to grow themselves.

Creams Splashing Out Of Your Ointment Mill? You Can Stop It!

Do you sometimes find it annoying when creams splash out of your ointment mill? Just follow the tips below to check for possible causes. It is a problem rather easy to prevent.

1. Set suitable gap sizes.

Usually the speed of the front roller is much faster than that of the rear roller. In order to balance input and output, we recommend setting the rear gap size larger than the front gap size. However, if the rear gap size is too much larger than the front, it might lead to a larger input than output. As a result, the creams will splash out of both sides of the rear gap. For THT’s T50 ointment mill, an ideal gap setting would be “1” for the front roller and “3” for the rear roller.

2. Check the condition of the plastic guides and the scraper.

If the plastic guides are not sitting on the rollers properly, there will be tiny gaps between the guides and the rollers through which the cream may leak. Likewise, if there is a gap between the front roller and the scraper, the cream cannot be collected sufficiently, which again leads to a larger input than output. So always check the plastic guides and the scraper before running the mill.

3. Lower the speed if necessary.

When running at full speed, the ointment mill is able to process more of your product in a given time period, meaning higher output and better productivity. However, thin creams tend to splash more easily, because they could not adhere to the rollers as firmly as the thick ones do, especially when the rollers are rotating at a high speed. Therefore, slowing down the mill could reduce the risk of splashing in some cases.
Just a few simple steps could help reduce waste and make compounding happier. Everyone could become an expert running an ointment mill!

Torrey Hills T50 Ointment Mill Now Available for Pre-order!

Here we proudly present Torrey Hills T50 oinment mill. 

Amazing $3,800 introductory price. Pre-order starts NOW. Act fast and save up to $200! http://www.threerollmill.com/50model.html

Three roll mill processing nano material - we were cited in many papers!

Our lab model three roll mill is the perfect choice for the processing of nano materials. Particles are thoroughly and uniformly dispersed. Here we have a selected few of papers to make our point.

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Superior electromagnetic interference shielding and dielectric properties of carbon nanotube composites through the use of high aspect ratio CNTs and three-roll milling

by Paul Theilmann, Dong-Jin Yun, Peter Asbeck, and Sung-Hoon Park

Summary:

Scientists from both the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of California and the Advanced Material Research Center at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology have discovered that three roll milling yields advanced electromagnetic interference shielding for carbon nanotube (CNT) composites. These researchers used a Torrey Hills three roll mill to guarantee successful assimilation and distribution of intertwined multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) in their polymer matrix. A stable and even dispersal is essential in achieving maximum efficiency in electromagnetic shielding for CNT/polymer composites.

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Automated dispersion and orientation analysis for carbon nanotube reinforced polymer composites

by Yi Gao, Zhuo Li, Ziyin Lin, Liangjia Zhu, Allen Tannenbaum, Sylvain Bouix and C P Wong

Summary:

Carbon nanotube (CNT) and polymer composites are very important to multiple industries, including aerospace, energy, electronics and many more, due to their strong durability as well as superior electrical and thermal conductivity. A Torrey Hills three roll mill was used to disperse dry CNTs into a silicone resin, so that researchers could compile orientation and dispersion indices with an image analysis technique. These indices will allow the properties of CNT/polymer composites to be more easily predicted, so that their microstructure can be optimized.

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 Room temperature ionic liquids for epoxy nanocomposite synthesis: Direct dispersion and cure

by James A. Throckmorton, Arianna L. Watters, Xing Geng, and Giuseppe R. Palmese

Summary:

In a study aiming to compare nanocomposites made with volatile solvents to silica nanocomposites made with a room-temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) preparation strategy, researchers in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Drexel University adjusted a Torrey Hills 2.5 x 5 three roll mill lab model to the precise specifications needed (a gap of 20 microns between the 2.5’’ diameter rollers, and a surface speed of 31, 84 and 174 RPM, in this case). The RTIL nanocomposite preparation proved to be an effective alternative, which may help improve the structural strength and electrical conductivity of thermosetting polymers, such as epoxies.

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RTM processing and electrical performance of carbon nanotube modified epoxy/fibre composites

by Elisabete F. Reia da Costa, Alexandros A. Skordos, Ivana K. Partridge, and Amir Rezai

Summary:

Researchers used a Torrey Hills three roll mill to disperse surface modified and unmodified carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into an RTM-grade (resin transfer molding) epoxy resin. They discovered that dispersing C100 nanotubes by three roll milling led to increased electrical conductivity in the final composite structure. This exciting research will help improve aerospace grade composites so that they have superior electrical capabilities.

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Flow of carbon nanoparticle loaded epoxy resin in liquid moulding

by Elisabete F. Reia da Costa, Alexandros A. Skordos, Ivana K. Partridge, and Amir Rezai

Summary:

Aiming to investigate how to best transfer the valuable properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to polymer nanocomposites, researchers from the Composites Centre at Cranfield University milled dry C100 nanotubes and surface activated nanotubes into a resin with a Torrey Hills three roll mill, so that Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) could be performed afterwards. Studying the RTM of glass and carbon epoxy composites that contain dispersed carbon nanoparticles has helped scientists understand that CNTs must be consistently dispersed into a homogeneous polymer in order to best yield high electrical conductivity and advanced thermal properties.

Award Winning Manufacturer to Release New T50 Ointment Mill to Compounding Pharmacies at $3,800* Per Unit

Torrey Hills Technologies, LLC (THT)  announced the selling of its T50 ointment mill in the U.S. and international markets later this year at IACP's 20th Annual Compounders on Capitol Hill (CCH), which was held at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia.

After the extremely successful T65 series three roll mill, THT is now applying its Golden Bridge Gold Prize Award Winning technology to the development of T50 ointment mill, featuring user friendly interface, premium alumina rollers, advanced fine adjustment mechanism, superior noise control, and super-fast material processing. This model, equipped specifically for the pharmacy compounding industry, is designed in the US and assembled with US and foreign components to maximize its power, dispersing efficiency, and throughput.

Being built as a compact countertop model, T50 ointment mill is priced at $3,800* to fit the needs of pharmacy of all sizes, especially benefiting startups and smaller pharmacies since it is 15-40% less expensive than other competitive models. At this unmatched selling price and with little to none maintenance required, the cost of ownership is the lowest in the market. T50 ointment mill is scheduled to be released in fall 2014.

“We are very excited about this opportunity to introduce award winning technology to pharmacy compounding customers,” said THT President Ken Kuang. “With decades of experience manufacturing three roll mills and working closely with our compounding customers, we confidently position our T50 as a mill for both the result minded and the budget minded.”

.* To enjoy this limited time introductory offer, please sign up to receive coupon code and be the first to learn the T65 release date Here.