The cosmetics industry is generally very innovative and fast-paced. The average lifespan of a skincare or cosmetic product is short. However, even in this industry, it can happen that an innovation takes a long time before the market is ready for it.
The international markets.
The best example of this is Evonik's enzymatically produced emollients. The first of these products was launched in 1998. It wasn’t until twenty years later that demand surged significantly. “Between 2018 and 2023, our revenue from enzymatic emollients increased by 165 percent,” says Dr. Wolfgang Goertz, Head of Cosmetic Solutions at Evonik.
“We were visionary and had staying power,” the chemist reflects. In 1998, he had just joined the then Th. Goldschmidt AG as a young R&D manager and was amazed by the possibility of using enzymes to produce emollients. Since 2001, he has been overseeing the marketing of these products in the Personal Care business line.
Emollients are an essential component of cosmetic products. “Emollients make the skin soft and smooth,” explains Goertz. “And by retaining moisture in the skin, they ensure that the skin doesn’t dry out and stays healthy.” They thus play an important role.
Enzymes as catalysts
Chemically, most emollients are fatty acid esters. The raw materials—a fatty acid and a fatty alcohol—are usually of plant origin (see graphic). Traditionally, the esterification reaction is driven by a chemical catalyst and high reaction temperatures. This makes the production of emollients energy-intensive and prone to the formation of by-products or even product mixtures. Additional treatment and purification steps may then be required.
Enzymes, on the other hand, as biological catalysts, work at moderate temperatures, completely solvent-free, and produce only the desired product. This makes the process significantly more sustainable while also achieving higher product purity.
As life cycle assessments show, the carbon footprint of an enzymatically produced emollient is up to 70 percent lower than that of the same fatty acid ester produced chemically.
Since Evonik began using electricity from renewable energy sources at all production sites for cosmetic ingredients, the greenhouse gas potential of enzymatically catalyzed emollients is almost zero. Due to the high-volume share of emollients in cosmetic products—up to 25 percent—the positive effect is also measurably reflected in the carbon footprint of the end product.
Consumers focus on sustainability
Goertz: “Consumers of cosmetic and skincare products today are much more environmentally conscious than they were 20 or 30 years ago. That’s why it’s worthwhile for the cosmetics industry to offer more sustainable products.” The key to this is choosing the right ingredients. And these come from suppliers like Evonik.
“We help our customers meet their customers’ needs—especially when it comes to product performance and sustainability,” says Goertz.
Evonik increasingly realizes the aspect of sustainability by renewable or alternative raw materials that do not compete with food production or contribute to the destruction of natural ecosystems, as well as through biobased production processes.
From a process perspective, enzymatic catalysis posed several challenges for Evonik’s scientists and engineers. It was necessary to find suitable enzymes and determine the optimal process conditions for the reaction. And repeatedly test new combinations of fatty acids and fatty alcohols. “Not all chemically produced emollients are suitable for enzymatic catalysis,” explains Goertz. “However, enzymatic processes can also produce structures that are not achievable chemically.”
A key factor for the economic viability of the production method was the ability to reuse the enzymes multiple times. “This was achieved through enzyme immobilization,” says Dr. Yorck Mohr. He wasn’t involved at the time but later helped advance the technology of enzymatically catalyzed emollients as an R&D manager for biobased processes for several years. He describes the principle of immobilization as follows: “The enzymes remain in one place, and the reactants move past them.”
Evonik has implemented this principle in two different reactor types: a fixed-bed reactor and a bubble column reactor (see graphic). In the fixed-bed reactor, synthesis takes place in a kind of long, coiled tube. The enzyme is embedded in a resin, and the liquid reaction mixture is pumped past it.
In the bubble column reactor, the enzyme floats on polystyrene particles in the substrate mixture. Movement is generated by introduced gas, ensuring the components are distributed as effectively as possible. This achieves optimal process yields.
ELEMENTS-Newsletter
Get exciting insights into Evonik's research and its societal relevance—delivered conveniently via email.
INFOGRAPHIC: Two Reactor Types
“No other company has dealt as intensively and continuously with enzymatically produced emollients since the 1990s as we have,” says Mohr. Evonik is now reaping the benefits of this.
Production at three sites
To meet the growing demand for these sustainable emollients, Evonik commissioned a new production facility in the fall of 2024 in Steinau, Hesse in Germany, a small town between Vogelsberg and Spessart. “A technological masterpiece,” Mohr enthuses.
The first facility was built in Duisburg, Rhine-Ruhr-area in Germany, in the late 1990s; a second followed in 2014 in Shanghai, China. With three production sites, Evonik can realize a wide range of substrate combinations. Depending on the raw materials, for example, the viscosity—or thickness—of the substrate mixture changes. This determines which plant design—and thus which production site—is best suited for manufacturing. The fine-tuning of process parameters is then carried out on-site.
With the enzymatic process, Evonik has significantly expanded the range of available emollients for cosmetic and skincare products. The chemical composition of the enzymatic variant always differs slightly from the conventionally produced one. Nevertheless, the combination possibilities of fatty acids and fatty alcohols of certain chain lengths were slowly running out.
To meet the cosmetics industry’s demands for specific application properties of enzymatic emollients, Evonik recently took another step forward: “We are replacing the fatty alcohol with a sugar alcohol,” explains Dr. Jan Marian von Hof, program manager at Evonik’s Biotech Hub. “This greatly expands our substrate spectrum.”
The challenge here: Sugar alcohols only melt at 90 degrees Celsius—a temperature that enzymes usually cannot withstand. It required considerable expertise and skill to adapt the production process and the substrate.
Additionally, ECOHANCE Remo XP is based on three alternative raw material sources: The sugar alcohol xylitol is a by-product of wood processing; the fatty acid is derived from sunflower oil; and sugar alcohol sorbitol comes from locally grown wheat. For this reason, Evonik’s Care Solutions business line includes the product in its ECOHANCE program. At In-Cosmetics 2024, it was awarded as the best new product.
Goertz assures: “Our innovation pipeline remains well-stocked. We still have many ideas.”
