Hydroalcoholic gels basically contain four major ingredients: alcohol, water, rheology modifier and neutralizer.          The effectiveness of the sanitizer using alcohol depends on the amount and type of alcohol.

The FDA proposed monograph considers the effective concentrations as follows:

• Ethanol at 60-95 v/v%

• Isopropanol at 70-91.3 v/v%.

Carbomer Selection

Although all NM-Carbomers can thicken hydroalcoholic systems, several grades offer advantages such as higher clarity, better efficiency, ease of handling and better overall aesthetics for hand sanitizing gels. NM-Carbomer 20 /2020/1342/1382 polymer are good rheology modifiers for these gels. A typical hand sanitizing gel contains less than 40 wt% deionized water. Due to this constraint, the low dispersion viscosity, as well as the processing ease, makes the NM-Carbomer 20 /2020/1342/1382 well-suited for these types of formulations as compared to the more traditional polymer grades.