Teach Soap

Can I use polysorbate 80 for making perfume? The recipes I have say PS20, but all I ordered was 80.

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~~Heather~~
Mad [soaping] Scientist

The attached photo shows the basic structure of polysorbate family.
The difference between different ranges (polysorbate 20, 40, 60 , 80) is based on the PEG numbers and the structure (chain or branched)
The HLB value for Polysorbate 20 and 80 is 16,7 and 15 respectively. The higher the HLB, the more watersoluble the molecule.

So Polysorbate 20 is more water soluble than polysorbate 80, vice versa, polysorbate 80 is more oil soluble than polysorbate 20.
Polysorbate 20 is generally applied to dissolve fragrances and EOs in water, polysorbate 80 is applied to make O/W emulsions with lipids (paraffin or natural oils)
You can definitely not substitute polysorbate 80 for polysorbate 20 in a 1:1 relation. I've never tried myself to apply polysorbate 80 as a perfume solubilizer and have never seen any recommendation for that.
Simply: do not try it. You'll have turbidity and phase separation

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Genius is 1 % inspiration and 99 % perspiration

Thanks hun! I asked them to add some PS20 to my order Much appreciated!

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~~Heather~~
Mad [soaping] Scientist

Actually you can use Poly 80 in place of poly 20, just not vice versa. I first used it in perfume after seeing an article on Swift's blog about it. It works just fine.

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Genny