One of the companies I'm asked most about is Lush, and their products are the most requested duplications on my Patreon subscription page. (This month I duplicated the Tea Tree Water Toner, the Jumping Juniper shampoo bar, the Godiva shampoo bar, and the Ocean Salt, which appears tomorrow.) I know the most visited duplication on this blog is for the Lush Dream Cream, so let's take a little look at their main emulsifier - a soap made from stearic acid and triethanolamine.

When we take stearic acid - a fatty acid we can buy as a flake - and triethanolamine - an alkaline pH adjuster - and combine them together at a 2:1 to ratio, we create a soap called TEA-stearate, an alkaline salt of stearic acid through the process of saponification. (Reference*)
When we create soaps from oils and lye through saponification, we're using a very alkaline thing - the sodium hydroxide - to turn the fatty acids into things like sodium tallowate (from tallow), sodium oleate (from oleic acid), or sodium palmitate (from palmitic acid), and so on.

These soaps are surfactants or surface active agents, meaning them get into the interface between oil and water and bring them together thanks to the hydrophilic or water loving head and the lipophilic or oil loving tail.

Related posts: A slightly more in depth look at emulsification

I'll be writing more about soaps and soap making in August as I'm trying these soaps I made back in May and July! If you'd like to see the lecture by Kevin Dunn...