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Showing posts with label Making your own perfume. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Making your own perfume. Show all posts

Wednesday, 2 March 2016

Perfume Making Workshops 30th April 1st May 2016 - London

Two workshops are planned:

How to Make Perfume & How to Make Better Perfume:

Advanced Skills for Perfumers:

Full details are on the Eventbrite Pages, but if you want to attend both please get in touch with me directly using enquiry@pellwall-perfumes.com as I can offer a discounted price for both.

Tuesday, 5 January 2016

A WondAroma Podcast

Happy New Year!


Episode 10 of the WondAroma podcast features the Pell Wall perfumer Chris Bartlett talking to Christine Daley of Perfumer Supply House about:


The audio quality starts off rather poor but gets markedly better from about 14 minutes in and continues to improve throughout.



Here are some other links to things we talk about that you might find handy:


http://www.bsp.org.uk/- The British Society of Perfumers
http://www.perfumers.org/ - American Society of Perfumers
http://www.amazon.com/The-Perfect-Scent-Perfume-Industry/dp/0312425775 - Chandler Burr's book about Jean Claude Ellena (perfumer at Hermes)

Saturday, 14 March 2015

Tolu Balsam

Tolu Balsam is a very useful natural fixative as well as a lovely base-note in its own right, but it isn’t the easiest of materials to handle.  It comes from the South American tree Myroxylon balsamum.  

It is used to fix materials such as juniper, petitgrain, spices and florals of many kinds and frequently forms a key component of oriental and chypre styles of perfume.
Rock-likc pure Tolu Balsam


Arctander describes it as: "a brown, orange-brown or dark yellowish brown mass, brittle when cold, and the fracture is glasslike or flintlike. Its odor is sweet-balsamic, cinnamic in type, faintly floral and with an undertone of vanillin.” and at normal UK temperatures it’s certainly rock-hard and behaves rather like a chunk of Brighton Rock when it’s broken.


Tolu and TEC form a strange, alien landscape
So to make it practical to handle it needs to be diluted in a suitable solvent - it’s often sold already diluted in this way though the dilution isn’t always declared nor the solvent named - I bought a pure Kg recently and diluted it ready for use in TEC (tri-ethyl citrate) in a process that turned out to be both quite involved and to produce some fun images, so I thought I’d write it up here.


Is that a creature emerging?
The first job was to get the Kg of rock-like Tolu Balsam soft enough to pour out of its container, which I did by sitting the container in a bain-marie and boiling the water beneath it: this took a few hours before the material was fully liquid.  Meanwhile a pre-weighed out amount of TEC was heated on my heater-stirrer with a stirring bar already in the bottom of it (if you don’t heat the solvent as well the tolu will go hard again as soon as it hits the cool liquid and takes much longer to go into solution).

The next step is to pour the hot, liquid tolu into the pre-warmed solvent (insulated gloves are called for for this step of course).  At this point we realised that there was a photo opportunity as the resulting non-yet-mixture looked like an alien landscape.  The tolu settled to the bottom of the solvent and the application of glass rods was necessary to get it to start dissolving as it was much too sticky for the automatic stirrer at that stage: as those went in it started to look like one of those scenes from the Alien series where the creatures start unfolding from the cave walls . . .

  This is all being done in a three litre glass beaker and as you can see in the later pictures the manual stirring took some time before we could leave the automatic stirrer to get on with the job on its own and the balsam tended to dry on the glass very quickly too.

The cling film you can see was to minimise loss of aromatic quality as this was all being done hot, although with such a high-boiling material and high-boiling solvent that isn’t a big concern.

A stirring start
Gloopy-looking stuff

Pasta possibly?
Eventually it reached the stage where it was liquid enough for the automatic stirrer to do its stuff and with the stirrer on a low setting it was left overnight to complete the mixing, kept at a constant 60 degrees centigrade by the integral heater.  By morning it was fully mixed to form a dark brown, consistent, mobile liquid and here you can see me concentrating hard as I pour it into a (slightly pre-warmed) 3Kg glass reagent bottle. The bottle is on the scale so that I can check the amount that’s gone into it for stock control purposes.
Perfect for Perfume: Tolu Balsam at 30% in TEC



We even captured a little video of that part of the process, which gives you a clear idea of the consistency once it’s finished:






A few chips and flakes were left over from the mixing process and these were put into a plastic jar  - the picture at the top of this post is of those, a few weeks later by which time they have merged together to form a single solid but uneven lump, much like that with which the whole process started.

Thursday, 12 March 2015

Special Offer Ingredients

Clearance Bargain Ingredients - only one of each!

From time to time people order perfumery ingredients from me and, either because they say they are in a hurry or just because I’m trying to keep ahead of things, I make up the order before they pay . . . then sometimes they don’t pay, either because they changed their minds, ran out of money or perhaps because it was just a wind-up or a fantasy...

Me in declamation mode ;-)
Whatever the case I put the material aside to include in a future order but one way and another the storage shelf has become rather cluttered with these orphans, so I’ve decided it’s time to shift them, so here’s your chance to snag yourself a serious bargain:


  • Azarbre, 10mlsold
  • Azarbre, 25mlsold
  • Camphene at 50% in IPM, 100mlsold
  • Cedarwood Atlas Supra, 100mlsold
  • Dihydro Ionone Beta, 10mlsold
  • Fixateur 505E, 100ml, sold
  • Fixateur 505E, 100ml, £99 *New*
  • Geosmin at 1% in DPG, 100ml, sold
  • Hedione (original Firmenich), 1Kgsold
  • Hexalon / Tropical Ionone, 10mlsold
  • Hydrocinnamaldehyde, 25mlsold
  • Ionone alpha, 100mlsold
  • Iso E Super, 200mlsold
  • Iso E Super, 100ml, sold
  • Methyl Diantilis, sold
  • Musk Ketone at 10% in BB/ethanol, 1Kgsold
  • Myrcene, 5ml, free with anything else
  • Nectarate, 100mlsold
  • Nutty Pyrazine, at 0.1% in IPM, 4ml, free with anything else
  • Olibanum Resinoid (Frankincense resin) 30% in TEC, 500g £35 *New*
  • Orris Givco 204, 500g sold 
  • Rose Givco 217, 25ml, sold
  • Rose Otto Persian, 30mlsold
  • Rum Acetal at 50% in DPG, 25mlsold
  • Traseolide, 500g £29 *New*
  • Veramoss/Evernyl, 30gsold
  • Zenolide, 100mlsold

Note that in each case what’s on offer is the specific size indicated: if you wanted another size they are all on the list (except Rum Acetal which I no-longer stock), but then you don’t get the benefit of the special clearance price.  Note 13/3/15: Just added Musk Ketone, pre-dissolved in benzyl benzoate and ethanol - a real bargain as it’s notoriously hard to get into solution - and another one I no-longer stock having changed over to IFF’s Musk Ketone Replacer.

UK Shipping on these is, as usual for ingredient sales, at the flat rate of £9.50 however many or few you buy.  If you’re anywhere else in the world, I’ll have to quote.

If you want to combine these with an order from the main lists that’s absolutely fine, but pay for these first or you might miss them while you’re browsing through the 300 other materials on offer!

Payments by PayPal or fast Bank Transfer please to secure them: Send an email to enquiry@pellwall-perfumes.com saying what you want and where you are.  I’ll process those in the order they arrive.

Order quickly to avoid disappointment!

Tuesday, 10 March 2015

Perfumery Ingredients at Pell Wall

The March issue of my Ingredients List is now online and the list now features some 300 materials, both natural and synthetic, with some very exciting new additions and a spectacular price reduction on one material thanks to some help from a friend in the US.

There are two versions of the list on the website and both can be downloaded or printed for easier reading as well as browsed directly on the site itself.  The first features descriptions of the odours and uses of the materials both from their manufacturers and from me.  I’m expanding this aspect all the time and there are new write-ups included since the last release in January.

alt : Ingredients for sale pdf

But if you just want to compare prices with other ingredient suppliers you’ll appreciate the second list more - it’s just product names, CAS numbers and prices presented in tabular form:


alt : Price List for Ingredients

Among the new additions you’ll find several new naturals such as labdanum absolute, orange flower absolute and violet leaf absolute - all among my favourite ingredients to use, though not cheap I’m afraid.

Speaking of cheap, that big reduction is for Centifolether - down from £52 for 100ml to just £22.  Also very good value is a new musk I’m offering for the first time that you don’t see about much called Zenolide: it’s a great material, as good as some of it’s better known brothers yet almost as cheap as Ethylene Brassylate so you can use it freely.  £17 for 100ml.

But if you want to find out what all the other new things are, you’ll just have to take a look at the lists :-)


Saturday, 10 January 2015

The Quinolines

I thought it might be useful to do another in my occasional series of disambiguation posts about perfumery ingredients with easily confused names or equivalences.  This time I’m looking at a group of similar ingredients used to create an earthy, leather note in fragrances:


No quinolines in
Sticky Leather Sky
Isobutyl quinoline (CAS number 65442-31-1), of which there are several versions on the market all using that name and a version made by Givaudan called Pyralone and one made by Symrise called Isobutyl quinoline 54.

Butyl quinoline secondary - another Givaudan product name - designates a mixture of two isomers: CAS numbers 65442-31-1 and 67634-06-4, the second of which is 8-tert-butyl quinoline, which is not present in Pyralone.

Isobutyl quinoline (CAS number 68198-80-1) is another material produced by Symrise under the same name and, despite the name, is not equivalent with either of the Givaudan products.


Just as a matter of curiosity, I didn’t use any of the above materials to create the leather notes in Sticky Leather Sky: there are lots of alternative means of creating such notes, but that’s for another post.

Friday, 12 December 2014

Workshops - February 7th and 8th 2015 - London

Following on from my post last month, I’m now able to confirm dates and location for the workshops.

There are two workshops Introductory and Advanced - there are still places on the Introductory but only one place left on the Advanced:


Some ingredients for the Introductory Workshop
On Saturday 7th February I’ll be holding a repeat of the workshop last held in May 2014, which takes you from an introduction to the materials right through to making a bottle of your own perfume that you’ve designed yourself in the course of the day.  This workshop is suitable for people who have never made perfumes of any kind before but as there is a lot of practical work and individual tuition it is also suitable for those with some prior blending experience.  Arrival from 10am, starting promptly at 10.30 and concluding at 5.30.


Workshop Folder with integral calculator

The price is £155 per person, which includes light refreshments on arrival, mid-morning and mid-afternoon, lunch, six hours of tuition and practice, all the materials you need, a bottle of your own fragrance to take home, full documentation and a nice folder to keep all your formulas and notes in.


Introductory Workshop only £155

All the catering will be provided by the hotel (see below), which also offers free wifi in case you feel the need to check your email or send a tweet in the breaks.


On Sunday 8th February I’ll be holding an Advanced Workshop for those who have done a prior workshop or who otherwise already know all the essential techniques of blending and are familiar with the most common materials.  The price for the advanced workshop is £175 per person and in this one we’ll be doing two things:
In the first half we will look at a particular group of materials used in perfumery with a view to understanding them better.  Delegates will be able to vote their choice from:
  • Musks - an exploration of musk ingredients, the differences between them in olfactory terms and how to use each to best effect.
  • Ambersan exploration of amber / ambergris ingredients, the differences between them in both olfactory terms and usage.
  • Something else suggested by a delegate as long as I know about it in time to prepare materials and gain agreement from the rest of the group.
  • Fixativesan exploration of non-musk fixative ingredients, the differences between them in both olfactory terms and usage.

In the second half everyone will have the opportunity to either bring a blend they are working on that they’d like help improving, continue work on something started in the prior workshop or create something new.  I will be on hand to provide guidance throughout and, as the maximum number of people for this workshop is smaller, I’ll be able to spend more time with each person.  The full range of materials examined in the morning session will be available for you to practice within the afternoon.

As before you get to make up a bottle of your creation to keep, but with this one you can choose a 30ml bottle from the Pell Wall range to take home as well.


 Advanced Workshop only £175

Arrival from 10am, starting promptly at 10.30 and concluding at 5.30.

Everything you need is included and the workshop is fully catered by the hotel:


The location for both workshops is the St James’ Court Hotel on Buckingham Gate, which as they say in their literature, is a gemstone’s throw from Buckingham Palace.

Nearest tubes are St James’s Park (2 mins walk), Victoria (8mins walk) and Green Park (12 mins walk through the park and past the palace).

If you want to book both workshops you can still do so but the discounted rate is now sold out - sorry!


Sunday, 7 December 2014

Perfume Making Workshop - Incense - London 31st January 2015

Just one place left on this workshop!

On Saturday 31st January I’m running another in my series of perfume making workshops, this one is in association with the Perfume Lovers London Meet-up Group and follows on from a talk I’m giving the previous Thursday on the use of incense notes in fragrance: you don’t have to be at the talk to do the workshop as here we’ll be focusing on making perfume, while the talk is about enjoying it.

The cost for the workshop is £150 and includes a vegetarian lunch and refreshments on the day:

An earlier perfume making workshop in London


Incense is almost certainly the oldest form of perfume and the burning of incense continues to be a significant part of the religious observance of a huge number of people around the world.  Whether for this reason or simply because it smells so attractive the incense note continues to enjoy popularity in modern, alcohol-based, perfumery too.

Over the course of the day we'll be investigating the use of a range of ingredients that contribute to the distinctive note of incense including frankincense; myrrh and other natural materials, as well as some of the synthetics that are used and the vital supporting role of some of the other materials involved.

By the end of the day you’ll have had an opportunity to build an alcohol-based fragrance of your own, featuring incense, and you get to take home a bottle of your finished creation.  If you’ve never made perfume before I’ll take you through the process step by step, but for those who are already familiar with these techniques you’ll be able to explore the incense materials and how they work together using the range of materials available.

Oh and in case you need an extra incentive, did you know there is a gin with an incense note too? We'll have some to taste, towards the end of the day.

The venue is a private house in Kew (near to Kew Gardens Underground).  Refreshments will be available from 9.30 and the workshop starts at 10am.

Wednesday, 13 August 2014

How To Make Perfume

The spread at the beginning of the article
as it appeared in print on 3rd August 2014
If you want to make perfume yourself and are looking for help to get you started, this is the place. Here are links to methods, sources of ingredients, recommended equipment and advice: everything I wished I could find when I started out myself!

On the 3rd of August the Independent on Sunday ran an article, which featured on the front page of the magazine, on the theme of how difficult it is to get started in perfumery whether you intend it as a hobby or, as I did, want to make a living at it.  I was interviewed for that article along with several other independent and amateur perfumers.

The article is by Rhodri Marsden and the accompanying photography by Dan Burn-Forti.  Dan has kindly supplied me with pictures from the photo-shoot we did for the piece and I’m featuring some of the ones that were not used in the article in this post.

I don’t propose to repeat any of what was said in the article here - it stands on it’s own - what I do want to do is to provide here some links and tips that may be helpful to those starting out or struggling with some of the problems the article highlights.

Part of the ingredients store
at Pell Wall by Dan Burn-Forti
So, first up if you’re looking for ingredients and don’t have the budget or space for an array such as we have at Pell Wall, where can you go to get supplies in smaller amounts?
  • Pell Wall sell one of the largest ranges of perfumery materials available online in quantities from 10ml / 10g upwards, and can also offer a comprehensive range of starter kits.
  • De Hekserij in the Netherlands have a good range and now also an English language website which makes ordering much easier for those of us who don’t speak Dutch
  • Perfumer’s Supply House in the USA have a growing range including some very unusual ingredients
  • Perfumer’s Apprentice in the USA have a large range including most of the basics you’ll need.
Chris in the Lab at Pell Wall
 by Dan Burn-Forti
All the above are reliable suppliers I’m comfortable recommending.  Those in Europe should keep in mind that ordering from the US will mean you’ll need to pay both VAT and Duty on import - exactly how that works depends on the courier the supplier uses - talk to them first so you know what to expect - however the reverse case isn’t so bad as the US does not charge duty on import for most perfumery materials.  Shipping is also a significant factor when ordering from abroad, so I recommend looking at suppliers as close to your own location as possible first.

For help with learning the art itself I’m going to point to other more detailed posts offering help:
More ingredients than you can shake a stick
(or a smelling strip) at by Dan Burn-Forti
Places you can go to get some training or practice in the UK include:
  • My own workshops in London or Shropshire - advertised on this blog as they come up
  • The Cotswold Perfumery where perfumer John Stephen runs regular courses and, once you’ve attended one, will also sell you ingredients and equipment.
  • Karen Gilbert runs courses online and in London covering making perfume and skincare

Some detailed posts about particular ingredients:
If all that didn’t answer your questions, you’ll need somewhere else to turn: I’m adding things to this blog all the time, so do please keep a watch here.  I’m also one of many people, including some other fully qualified perfumers, who answer questions, collaborate with one another and generally exchange information about this fascinating art and science in two main forums:
Join up on either or both and add your voice to the conversation.
Chris and Jungle (one of the Pell Wall Pack) in one of the
ingredients stores at Pell Wall by Dan Burn-Forti

Finally, let me just add that if you’re looking for specific advice or assistance with any perfumery problem and, for whatever reason, you don’t want to post about it on those public forums I’m willing to help - for a small fee - check the consultation section of the website for details.

Happy perfume making!

Friday, 17 May 2013

Perfume Making Evening in Shropshire


If you are in or near Shropshire in June, how do you fancy an evening of making your own perfume?  I'm running a gently educational, but mostly fun evening putting together your own fragrance on Tuesday 11th June from 6pm.



At the Craft Café
2, Wellington Road,
Newport, Shropshire


With the Pell Wall Perfumer




Three and a half hours of tuition and practice plus you get to take home a bottle of perfume you have designed yourself.

£45 per person – price includes all the materials, an atomizer of your completed perfume and a glass of wine to enhance creativity.

Bring along a snack of your own to keep you going: it’s quite a long evening!
11th June 2013
6pm to 9.30pm

Booking is essential: you can either buy your place here or book at the Craft Café in person.  If the event does not make the minimum numbers (4) or has to be cancelled for any other reason, you will get a full refund.

Monday, 29 April 2013

Ambergris substitutes - clarification of terms.

I've written already about natural ambergris (also called Ambra) and mentioned there that most perfumery uses synthetic substitutes.

Here I'm setting out some of those substitutes (mainly synthetic, but including some naturals) and trying to sort out some of the confusion resulting from the fact that there are so many different products with very similar names.


The ambreine produced from labdanum, also sometimes confusingly called Cistus oil, is a steam distilled product from Cistus ladaniferus.  I have been told by a leading producer of both labdanum absolute and cistus essential oil that the difference between the two products is as follows: Cistus oils are produced by steam distillation of the entire top-growth (twigs, leaves, stems and flowers) of the Cistus ladaniferus plant - a cistus absolute is sometimes also produced from the top-growth.  Labdanum products, by contrast,  are produced from a gum-resin found on the roots of the plant, which are first washed and then mechanically agitated to separate the gum from the rest of the roots, an essential oil, absolute and resinoid of labdanum are all produced from this gum-resin.

Ambrarome (from Synarome) and Ambrain (from IFF) are similarly extracted by proprietary processes from the labdanum resin (referred to as gum-labdanum sometimes though I think incorrectly - see details in this post for definitions). These are highly animalic in smell and designed as plant-based alternatives to the traditional animal components of perfumery.

Ambrox is a term usually used to mean Ambrox DL or one of it's synonyms: quite different from the labdanum based materials because it's a brand name for a single synthetic molecule (though a mixture of isomers) which replicates one of the components of natural ambergris.  The term ambrox is sometimes used to mean any of a range of similar products, in particular Ambroxan / Ambrofix / Orcanox that are brand names for chiral isomers [specifically (-)-Ambroxide], which though similar, are not quite the same. In my work I mainly use Ambrofix, which is made by Givaudan from a natural starting material, though I do use some of the others too.

Just to confuse matters further there is also Ambrein which is the waxy substance that is the majority component of natural ambergris, the breakdown products of which give the precious scented molecules of ambroxide and others that have been replicated by the various brand-named products above.  When pure, ambrein is odourless.  Bo Jensen provides a good description of what's going on (scroll down to the text just below the whale pictures).  I also use several of the other substitutes mentioned by Bo Jensen in his article for particular purposes.

Further confusion often arises between Ambergris (Ambra) products and Amber - a term that in perfumery is sometimes used to refer to a product made from the fossil amber by destructive distillation of the waste and low-grade amber left over form the jewellery trade.  This is described by Arctander as having a "smoky, tarlike, resinous" odour "with a distinct resemblance to the smell of tanned leather".  He mentions that there is also a rectified version of this oil, which has been steam distilled as well, but he says that this is "very little used in perfumery".

More often however amber refers to a blend of ingredients intended to give an warm scent reminiscent of both ambergris and the appearance of fossil amber (which in its raw state has virtually no odour).  Such blends normally include labdanum, vanilla, benzoin and other ingredients; are are often used as fixatives.  Some of the products named in the first paragraph fall into this category, but many perfumery houses and others will have their own blend.

Monday, 25 March 2013

Introduction to Aroma Chemicals Kits

Aroma-chemicals Blending Kit by Pell Wall
I've been asked a few times whether I have perfumery materials, especially the synthetics, available in small amounts for amateur perfumers and indeed for perfume collectors who want to learn more about what makes up the notes in their favourite perfumes.  I'm often asked what I would recommend for people who have already explored the widely available natural materials and now want to make a foray into synthetics, but struggle with the huge range and difficulties of availability.

In response to these I posted some time ago suggesting which materials I believed would be best to start with and what other equipment you need.

I've now put together a kit of 56 materials that newcomers to synthetics can use to educate themselves about the available options and explore the wonderful range of scent effects that can be achieved with them, which is available through the web-shop where you can also explore the detailed scent descriptions and other information on some 400 or so different aromatic materials used in perfumery that are for sale.

Aroma-chemicals Discovery Kit by Pell Wall
I'm making the materials available in two sets Discovery and Blending. Both feature the same selection of 56 materials (listed at the end of this post).

The Discovery Kit is intended to enable a wide range of materials to be explored at a reasonable cost and comes in 5ml bottles. This set is ideal if you want to get a better idea of what is in the fragrances you collect or if you are a beginning perfumer, wondering whether or not to add synthetics to your palette.  Most materials are supplied pure but some, either for ease of handling or because they are very powerful, are diluted as specified in the list.







The Blending Kit is a bit more expensive, suited to perfumers who already know they want to work with synthetics as well as naturals but may not be sure what to buy or able to afford large amounts of everything they would like to use.  It provides enough of each material to enable full exploration of its potential in blending so that you can discover how they interact with each-other and with your existing naturals.  Each of the 56 materials comes in a protective cobalt blue 30ml bottle and several more are also presented pure or at a higher concentration than in the Discovery Set.  The bottles come with a plain cap for shipping but bulb-pipettes can be supplied to go with them on request.




These are materials that I use myself and that are widely used in commercial perfumery at the same grade that professional perfumers use.

Ingredients in the kits:

Aldehyde C10 - Decanal 10%

Aldehyde C12 MNA 10% (1%)
Allyl amyl glycoate
Ambrettolide (10%)
Ambrofix 10%
Aroma Chemicals Blending Kit by Pell Wall
Aurantiol (10%)
Benzyl Salicylate
Calone liquid
Castoreum (synthetic) 1%
Cedramber
Cinnamic alcohol 50%
Citral
Citronellol
Civet (synthetic) 0.1%
Cyclamen Aldehyde (10%)
Dimetol
Dihydromyrcenol
Ebanol
Ethyl linalool
Ethyl Maltol @1%
Ethyl Vanillin @10%
Ethylene Brassylate
Exaltolide 50%
Floralozone (10%)
Florhydral
Fructalate
Geraniol
Geranyl Acetate
Hedione
Helional
cis-3-Hexenol (10%)
Indole 10%
Ionone beta
Iso e super
Kephalis
Linalool
Linalyl Acetate
Lyral
Aroma-chemicals Discovery Kit by Pell Wall
in it’s Really Useful Box
Melonal
Methyl anthranylate 50% (10%)
Nectarate
Norlimbanol 50% (10%)
Orange Terpenes (d-limonene)
Orange Power 2%
Oranger Crystals 10%
Phenyl Ethyl Alcohol
Rose Givco 217
Rose Oxide 1%
Romandolide
Saffraleine
SantalIFF
Undecavertol
Vanillin 10%
Velvione (10%)
Veramoss / Evernyl 10%
Vertofix 

All materials are full strength unless a percentage is given and the percentages in brackets apply only to the Discovery Kits (smaller bottles) with the higher strength included in the Blending Kit.

Please feel free to email me at enquiry@pellwall-perfumes.com with any questions or to discuss your requirements.  I can quote on request for a Blending kit with fewer materials too.


Discovery Kit of 56 Aroma Chemicals

 





Blending Kit of 56 Aroma Chemicals