CITROCOAT® EP – a Stable Effervescent Compound for Dry Home and Personal Care Products

Interview with Nicole Zeiler
Project Manager Non-Food at Jungbunzlauer Ladenburg GmbH

Can you give some background information on the development of your effervescent powder CITROCOAT®EP?

We have recently seen a growing trend for home and personal care products in dry form. Here sustainability is the driving force. Solid dosage forms offer to significantly reduce the product’s volume and weight, potentially meaning less packaging waste and a reduction in the emissions associated with transport. Products in tablet or powder format that are either diluted at home in a dispenser to create a cleaner or used as a single-dose shampoo tablet, just to name two examples. These kind of products typically contain an effervescent system to help with the disintegration or dispersion of the tablet, respectively the powder. During our application work we got a good understanding about what is desired from such products and what the market is demanding for. 

What does CITROCOAT® EP stand for?

We have produced a product called CITROCOAT® N for many years. CITROCOAT® N is citric acid, produced by fermentation and coated with a tiny layer of monosodium citrate to reduce moisture uptake and thereby to increase the storage stability of citric acids. One common application for this product are effervescent formulations. These products are very critical for production but also regarding storage stability as premature reactions can easily happen. In addition, these products require instant reactivity and in case of tablet applications, good compressibility is needed. So, we came up with the idea to develop an effervescent powder, a finished compound that is easy to handle and formulate with and furthermore has exceptional performance, our CITROCOAT® EP.    

How CITROCOAT® EP can address this challenges?

By bringing CITROCOAT® N and sodium bicarbonate together in the right ratio, we obtain a high reactivity and a nice foam development in the final application. By agglomerating both ingredients, the segregation potential is reduced during manufacturing. In addition, we have seen that this agglomeration step helps also with the compressibility, leading to significantly harder tablets. We have found a hardness increase of >70% when compared with a formula based on standard citric acid and sodium bicarbonate.   

Isn’t it risky to bring both products so close together?

This is where the magic of our CITROCOAT® N comes into the play. The tiny amount of coating reduces undesired premature reactions during the agglomeration step, but also helps with the product stability during shelf-life without negatively influencing reactivity when applied to water. 

In which applications does the product works best? 

CITROCOAT® EP performs very well in any kind of cleaning effervescent tablets but it also shows great performance in innovative products like shower steamers, just to name some examples. Any applications that contain an effervescent system and need some extra protection against environmental conditions. This is particular the case if you want to avoid using plastic packaging, which has been seen as a must for such products in the past. We stressed tablets of our developed cleaner formulations – one with CITROCOAT® EP, the other with regular citric acid and sodium bicarbonate, in an open storage test at 30°C and 50% relative humidity and compared the mass loss due to the carbon dioxide release. After three months we observed only a slight weight reduction of the cleaner tablets with CITROCOAT® EP, indicating a significantly improved storage stability compared to the formulation with regular citric acid.     

When will CITROCOAT® EP be available?

We are currently in the process of introducing CITROCOAT® EP to our customers and have already received a good initial feedback on it. Samples are readily available, feel free to get in touch with us for more information. 

Do you have a message for our readers? 

Our range of CITROCOAT® products provides a great toolbox for all kind of applications where citric acid is needed in a more stable form. With the new CITROCOAT® EP we have a nice addition to our CITROCOAT® N that combines excellent storage stability with formulation ease and superior processability. 

Green cleaning bottle IS MO

published in SOFW Journal 4-2022 https://www.sofw.com/en/sofw-journal/current-edition

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