Cetearyl Alcohol (and) Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate (Bio Conditioner)

Bio Conditioner is a blend of three ingredients: cetearyl alcohol, stearamidopropyl dimethylamine, and lactic acid.

• Cetearyl alcohol: a fatty thickener that boosts the viscosity and improves the stability of emulsions.
• Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine: a plant-derived cationic (conditioning) emulsifier. You can find it used in shampoos, conditioners, hair masks, and other haircare products.
• Lactic acid: stearamidopropyl dimethylamine needs to be neutralized with an acid in order to emulsify & condition, and that’s already been done for us with the inclusion of lactic acid. Stearamidopropyl dimethylamine lactate is stearamidopropyl dimethylamine that has been neutralized with lactic acid; it is the lactate salt form of stearamidopropyl dimethylamine.

According to the SDS, final composition is approximately 15–40% Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate and 1–5% Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine, with the remainder (55–84%) being cetearyl alcohol.

Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner has a a Natural Origin Index score of 0.97 (97%) in accordance with ISO 16128 guideline.

Cetearyl Alcohol (and) Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate

Waxy off-white flakes

ColonialChem suggests:

• Low-cost Hair Conditioner: 3–6%
• Premium Hair Conditioners: 6–8%
• Leave-In Conditioner: 1–2%
• They use it at 65% in a conditioner bar formulation

Usage levels for pure Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine generally range from 0.5–5%, depending on the source and the product type. If we assume the concentration of Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate in Bio Conditioner/Cola®Lac SLB is the middle of the range listed in the SDS (27.5%), a usage range of approximately 2–18% Bio Conditioner/Cola®Lac SLB results in the 0.5–5% suggested usage rate for Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine.

Nothing much—I don’t find it to be offensively fishy like some BTMS and BTMC ingredients!

ColonialChem notes it can smell if the pH of the final formulation is above 6.

55–65 °C (131–149°F)

The SDS lists a pH of 6–7 (5% solution in water), but in my experience it is lower. Simple formulations I’ve made with Cetearyl Alcohol (and) Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate tend to have a pH below 5.

Cationic (positively charged) when acidic.

Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine is quite basic on its own (Making Cosmetics notes “SD may increase the pH of a formula to 10-12”), but becomes cationic when acidified with lactic acid—which has already been done for us with Bio Conditioner.

The lower the pH, the more cationic Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine is.

Can be dispersed in oil and water.

Cetearyl Alcohol (and) Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate brings thickening, conditioning, and emulsifying properties to our formulations. In this way, you can think of it as somewhat similar to BTMS-25 and BTMS-50; a cationic (conditioning) surfactant blended with a fatty thickener.

Stearamidopropyl dimethylamine lactate is an amidoamine salt rather than a quaternary ammonium salt like behentrimonium methosulfate (BTMS) and behentrimonium chloride (BTMC), and while all have conditioning properties, they don’t perform identically. Stearamidopropyl dimethylamine is especially recommended for conditioning fine hair that is easily weighed down, and has much better compatibility with anionic surfactants.

If you love formulating hair care and can get it, I think it’s worth trying—especially if you fine hair that is easily weighed down.

This ingredient only exists as a refined product.

• Good conditioning with low irritation potential
• A great conditioner choice for finer hair that is easily weighed down
• I find is quite easy to work with, and much easier to use with than straight Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine
• Both stearamidopropyl dimethylamine and stearamidopropyl dimethylamine lactate are recommended for use in conditioning shampoos

If you can get Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine you could use that, but I would not consider this to be a beginner-friendly swap as I’ve found Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine to be more temperamental than this pre-neutralized, blended version. If using straight Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine you will need to adjust divide up the amount of Bio Conditioner in the formulation to include a fatty thickener and an acidic neutralizer; preferably cetearyl alcohol and lactic acid if you’d like to stay as close to possible as to the ingredient you’re replacing. Simply Ingredients has shared great information on how to work with Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine.

BTMS-50, BTMS-25, and Behentrimonium Chloride could be possible alternatives as well.

I like to run Bio Conditioner/Cola®Lac SLB through my DIY-only coffee grinder to break it down into smaller pieces so it dissolves faster; I find the flakes it comes in are prone to fusing together, and those bigger bits can take a while to dissolve. This is optional, but does speed things up!

I’ve had great results making one-pot emulsions with Bio Conditioner/Cola®Lac SLB. Simply combine all the heated phase ingredients in a beaker and heat until you can’t see any blobs of Bio Conditioner/Cola®Lac SLB + any other solid fatty ingredients have melted. Blend briefly with your immersion blender before switching to hand stirring as it cools. You can speed this process up by starting with pre-heated water, but I haven’t found that to be necessary.

All the emulsions I’ve made with Bio Conditioner/Cola®Lac SLB have been quite acidic, falling in the 4.3–4.8 range if there was nothing in the formulation that would raise the pH. You can raise the pH with a dilute NaOH solution (I use 10%); this will create cottage-cheese-like lumps, but don’t panic! Those clumps will re-incorporate into your formulation relatively quickly with a bit of time and hand stirring (I haven’t found more blending is required), leaving you with a product that is slightly thicker and has a higher pH.

I asked Colonial Chem (the makers of Cola®Lac SLB) about this, and they said:

“The ColaLac SLB is supplied at the low pH so that 100% of the amidoamine is in the lactate salt form, with a slight excess of lactic acid. It’s okay to increase the pH a bit, but I would not advise going higher than pH 6, as you can start to have a noticeable odor. As you increase pH, you’ll generate amidoamine in the non-salt form. This has lower solubility in water, which is why you’re noticing the transient cottage cheese appearance. As you noticed as well, it should re-incorporate into the emulsion without too much trouble. Adjusting pH slowly, with dilute base, and with high shear mixing so long as you avoid aeration is all acceptable. Mixtures of the amidoamine salt and amidoamine can get quite viscous indeed, and this is probably what you’re experiencing.”

Recommended final pHs for formulations using Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine generally range from 3.5–6.5, with the higher end recommended for use with anionic surfactants to improve charge compatibility.

Stored somewhere cool, dark, and dry, Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner should last at least two years.

Several manufacturers product Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate on its own; it is a liquid that is typically 88% active with a pH in the 4–4.5 range.

Colonial Chem has lots of useful information about Cola®Lac SLB on their website, including several sample formulations.

This is just a hypothesis, but from looking at the ISO 16128 scores for the elements of Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner, I think we can learn a bit more about the concentrations of Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate and Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine.

• Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner: 0.97
• Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate: 0.88 (from Coast Southwest’s Endicare® SDL-25 and Chemrez Technologies, Inc. Cerin® LAC90; we can’t be certain this is the same score the Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate in Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner would get, but it is probably close)
• Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine: approximately 0.75 (the average of the ratings for the two different Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine products sold by Colonial Chem)
• Cetearyl alcohol: 1

If we weight the scores of each ingredient by the percentage used in Cola®Lac SLB/Bio Conditioner, the only way to get a score of 0.97 (97%) is when the combined amount of Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine and Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Lactate is approximately 21–24%. I’m not sure if this is how ISO 16128 scores for blended ingredients are calculated, so take this with several grains of salt!

100g (3.5oz)

Buy it from an online DIY ingredient supplier. As of July 2025, the only place I’ve found to purchase it is YellowBee (Canada) as “Bio Conditioner”.