Лако-красочные материалы — производство

JUDI BEERLING

THE ROLE OF AN APPLICATIONS DEPARTMENT

An Applications Department within a fragrance house is responsible for ‘applying’ a fragrance oil or essence to a consumer product. This process in itself can be problematic, since the fragrance may not always be easily incorporated into the product base. Solubility of the fragrance could be a problem, for example, in an aqueous fabric conditioner system, a volatile, silicone-fluid-based antiperspirant or a hair dressing based on mineral oil. This might manifest itself as a haziness, as floating droplets of fragrance or as complete separation of a clear or milky layer. Dosing of liquid fragrance into talc or powder detergent can prove difficult if perfume dosage levels are above the norm, affecting the powder’s flow characteristics or causing lumping.

However, the job does not stop there, even once the perfume has been successfully dosed into the product. A number of other factors have to be studied to ensure that the perfume remains evenly dispersed within the product and does not cause its physical and chemical characteristics to change significantly over time. The integrity of the product needs to be checked over a period of accelerated storage at different conditions. The latter are often stipulated by the product manufacturer, who wants to ensure that the product’s characteristics or activity are unaltered by the fragrance, even if exported to tropical climates or sub-Arctic conditions. However, equally important to the perfumer who is designing a new fragrance, or an evaluator who is selecting a perfume from a repertoire or ‘shelf’, is to monitor any changes in the fragrance odour once in the product base, for example:

—Fragrance intensity, i. e. does it still have good impact?

—Perfume character, i. e. does the perfume still smell the same or very close to that of a newly made product (allowing for some desirable maturation or ageing of the perfume in the product over a 1 or 2 week period)?

The whole subject of stability testing is discussed in more detail later in this chapter.

Thus, it is the job of the applications chemist to be the ‘product expert’, who should be able to advise and carry out testing on any potential problems or issues related to the perfume in combination with the product base. This advice may be sought by:

—Perfumers and evaluators internally, to guide their choice of perfume types and individual raw materials suitable for a parti­cular product formulation.

—Sales personnel, to enable them to ask the right questions of their clients, e. g. what active ingredients might the product contain or is the type of packaging the client will use likely to cause a problem?

—Marketing personnel, of both the supplier and client, to help them decide on technical product-concept feasibility and the likely constraints on fragrance creativity.

—The client’s technical or R&D department, to discuss likely test protocols, advise on starting-point product formulations or possible product and perfume interactions to be taken into account during their development work or factory manufacture.

It is also true to say that part of the Applications Department’s role is to service any kind of client request for technical information, ranging from where a particular product raw material might be purchased to what sort of natural or functional additives could be added to the product to convey a particular consumer benefit.

To illustrate how an Applications Department works, the approach to the Business Scents Ltd brief given in Chapter 6 is discussed.