The Challenge
The customer was looking for a visually appealing large bead to be an abrasive in a consumer home care product. The beads needed to be aesthetically pleasing, requiring pigment selection and color matching. Particle morphology was important as the beads could not be hollow, broken or irregularly shaped. Additionally, the beads needed to withstand downstream extrusion processing, high humidity and high temperatures.
AVEKA Solution
AVEKA used alginate encapsulation to create robust, spherical beads that could survive extrusion and extreme environmental conditions. After examining many filler materials for hardness and evaluating for cost impact in the overall product, AVEKA conducted extensive formulation and stability testing to engineer a bead that met the customer’s requirements. This thorough process allowed AVEKA to define a color matching method and develop a test method. AVEKA worked closely with the customer not only throughout the research and development process, but also during scale-up and production of the beads.
