Deformulation Overview - Alfa Chemistry

What is Deformulation?

Deformulation refers to a set of analytical procedures of qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing the constituents or ingredients present for a given product, which can provide a thorough understanding of the product. In layman's terms, deformulation can be likened to duplicate a complex dish. It's as if you tasted a special meal and wanted to recreate it at home. To do this, you need to identify each ingredient and its amount. Deformation works the same way. This sounds simple, but it can be just as challenging as designing new products since complex product formulations can contain dozens of ingredients with different chemical properties. As such, deformulation often involves the development of extensive analytical methods as well as appropriate extraction and separation methods to identify the components of complex formulations. The quantification of components can also be very difficult, as some materials cannot be cleanly separated from the sample. Also because of this, some people think that deformulation can be a complete quantitative description of all components, or a semi-quantitative identification of major and minor components, so that their chemical parts and functions in the preparation can be identified.

DEFORMULATION

Why Perform Deformulation?

Even as researchers realize deformulation is a complex task, interest in it continues to grow. Because it is very useful in a variety of situations, such as:

Product Replication or Improvement: To duplicate and recreate or improve upon an existing formulation, you need to obtain the existing product ingredient list and the quantity of each ingredient.

Product Competition: One aspect of a competitor's product seems to be better than yours, then you may need to identify and quantify all the components of your competitor's product in order to improve your product.

Patent Infringement: If you believe that a competitor has infringed the patent or intellectual property rights of your product, or if your company is being sued for infringement, you need a thorough analysis to prove your position.

Marketing Claims: Competitor is making marketing claims and you want to know if their formula supports such claims. Or, you want to advertise the effectiveness and safety of your product, which may require customers to see real analytics data.

Failure Analysis: When a product suddenly appears abnormal, you may need a thorough analysis to identify unknown components or contaminants in the product so that defects can be quickly corrected.

Confirmation of Product Identity: After receiving the sample, you may need to check it for compliance with the safety data sheet (SDS) or the technical data sheet.

Raw Material Analysis: Before signing a long-term contract, you may need to assess whether the new supplier's products or raw materials meet the requirements.

Product Benchmarking: Confirmation of product identity during product development and for product bench-marking.

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All in all, there are many situations that require product deformulation, and just a few are listed above. Perhaps one day, you may have to perform deformulation for some unexpected reason, for example, a researcher has made a fantastic recipe, but has no record of the details, and no ability to reproduce the recipe.

What is the Most Important in Your Deformulation Analysis?

There is no doubt that the most important thing when you want to perform a product deformulation analysis is to choose a good partner. As mentioned before, product deformulation is a complex and time-consuming task, and choosing the suitable partner will greatly improve your efficiency and reduce your costs. Alfa Chemistry is a leader in the field of deformulation and has been providing deformulation service to various industries worldwide for many years. Our teams of senior PhD and Master chemists are very familiar with your requirements which can design value-added solutions. At the same time, we have mastered and possessed the most comprehensive and professional skills and tools for materials deformulation that can meet the most complex analysis needs. Today, we have accumulated extensive experience by working with many different formulations in many fields. No matter what your sample is, what the nature of the sample is, we can serve you. If you have any need, please contact us as soon as possible.