DIY e-liquid and nicotine extract method

[Ringo*]

Has anyone else thought of this? It sounds like a pretty clever way of dealing with the "concentration of nicotine" issue...

[katink]

Perhaps interesting in very dire times... because nicotine patches are not cheap by any standard (at least not over here) so it would be as if they had taxed the liquid into a tenfold price, if you would use those patches as standard way of getting nicotine together, I suspect.

[rlorange]

Get the strongest patches which supply 24mg I think over 24 hours. The 16 hour patches are almost identical except that you take them off before bed. Can't believ they market them as different how stupid do they think we are? equally why spend the same for a weaker patch when you can just cut the stronger one in half? Are people really that stupid?...

Anyway back to the topic. I originally heard this from the erowid files and from a chemistry student friend of mine who quite stupidly used to do this and then soak marijuana in it!

If you buy a patch you will see that even though it delivers 16-24mg of nicotine over the day through the skin there is actually much more in the patch which never makes it, 140mg per patch if I recall. Nicotine is very water soluble and even more so in alcohol so I think high-proof vodka might do the trick! I would find a sealed jar which will fit the patches lying flat in on the bottom and use very little alcohol (95% herbal tincture alcohol would be ideal).

I haven't tried it so maybe the glue would dissolve if so an easy way to remove it is to plug a syringe with cotton wool and then pour in the extract use the plunger to squeeze it through. Much less wasteful than filter paper and effective method to filter solutions.

True patches aren't cheap BUT for a weeks supply of 7, which costs around $20 in Australia, you should get 800+ mg of nicotine. That is enough to make 40mls of e -liquid at 20mg strength which I think is reasonable and would be cheaper if you purchase them in bulk.

Advantages are: Easy to do, known dosage of pure nicotine and the absence of the other stuff you would get from tobacco much of which is known to be toxic or cancerous.

Remember 800mg of nicotine dissolved in a few ml of alcohol is VERY DANGEROUS stuff, a few drops on your skin will make you very ill in a few minutes.

It IS safe however if done with care and the best part is with no fuss all you would have to do is evaporate most of the alcohol (leave a little) and simply add your Glycerin and flavour if you wish. the most dangerous part would be filtering which may not be necessary.

This method is my plan B if e liquid is banned from personal import in Australia. The government has used nicotines status as a shedual 7 poison to ban its sale in e cigarette liquid form within the borders. They will never be able to ban the device itself nor the nicotine free liquid so I can always add my own extracted Nicotine to commercial ncotine free e liquid or my own concoction.

Hope this helps, without a proper acid base extraction and proper chemistry techniques (albeit relativly simple ones) You are going to get a lot of other tobacco plant crap in with your extract, a straight liquid extract will get you lots of nicotine but also a lot of plant waxes etc which will not be good for you nor your atomizers. Even a crude acid/base extract will still leave residues which I would not want to be vaping any more that crude plant residues.

The best simple extract would be with plain water and use lots of tobacco leaf, raw and untreated. Soaking in plain cold water for days will extract the nicotine very preferentially and leave much of the plant reins behind BUT of course you don't know how much nicotine you have left. Also you have to reduce the volume a large ammount which with water is a problem because you cant heat it or you will lose your volatile nicotine. Nor can you use the sun to evaporate it beacuse light will destroy the nicotine.

A straight alcohol extract will be more efficient but also disolve more stuff along with the nicotine and the e juice would probably taste awfull!

Being so toxic and potent I don't think there is a safe and easy bedroom method to ectract nicotine from tobacco to a purity need for effective e juice . The patch extraction method is the only one I would attmept and should work very well.

Of course the easiest method by far is to make friends with a chemist and source some pure nicotine solution in alcohol. Enough probably to make a litre of juice! Or kill a Blue Whale!

-Rohan

[katink]

Thanks for your good explanation rlorange. I don't think we have such strong patches over here (last I looked the max you could get was 10 or so mg...). But they might be well findable on the internet from another european country, if needed; and indeed this seems a relatively safe way while knowing the result. So if worst scenario unfolds... this knowledge will be great to have.

And I can certainly imagine it to be a good source for you over in australia, if the gateways from overseas get closed!

[rlorange]

Well even a 10mg patch would still have a 100 or so mg of actual nicotine in it of which only 10mg is absorbed over time.

Definitely my plan B but I have a feeling that the government will not get away with an outright ban. A class action law suit would be a civil law lawyers dream. The government is stretching credibility real thin by allowing tobacco which has nicotine along with many other poisons to be sold, AND tax it exorbitantly. Not to mention that Nicotine replacement therapy is available without a prescription even from supermarkets now and as I have discussed has a whopping great dose per patch, enough to kill!

e liquid is not different to these and has no more or less potential for harm. Banning e cigarettes could be legally argued is unlawful in light of this, especially since the ban is denying addicted smokers probably the best alternative and means to quit smoking thus saving their life.

From what I hear, all that it would need to be liquid is the appropriate warnings and a child proof bottle... probably a good idea.

Does anybody know the legalities involved with purchasing nictoine from a chemical supplier?

[Lithium1330]

Originally Posted by rlorange

Does anybody know the legalities involved with purchasing nictoine from a chemical supplier?

If this is possible, then will be better to purchase a formulation of PG+nicotine instead of pure nicotine, the flavoring can be made easily, in Polonia someone purchased this formulation from a local lab, I'm looking forward for some chemical supplier here in Mexico willing to make the formula, maybe it can be done in the US too, time for contact chemical suppliers in your area!

[jbbishop]

I posted a simple and effective method for nicotine extraction and some discussion here:

Extracting nicotine from tobacco

The author of this discussion: Sciencemadness Discussion Board seems to believe that the gum in the patches is extremely difficult to deal with and remove, and seemingly regards the patches as being too expensive to extract from. Have you actually tried this?

Where do you find the documentation that declares the actual amount of nicotine that is contained in a patch, and why are you suggesting people can safely use cut patches when it says on the package to avoid this?

You can buy laboratory grade nicotine (at least here in the US). There are multiple US vendors which should ship it as long as you have a business address to send it to. http://store.galladechem.com/shared/Sto ... oducts.asp They charge $650 for 500mg. Expensive hazmat shipping charges apply. The author of the discussion on the sciencemadness forum suggests that you might be regarded as a terrorist if you try to order it anyway. The fact sheets for even the 40% solution make it clear that a person needs a HAZMAT suit to handle it.

[TribbleTrouble]

Another good source of known quantities of Nic is the carts for the Nicotrol Inhailer. Each cart contains 10 mg of Nic (4mg delivered when using the Inhailer). If you pop out the white inserts in the carts and soak them in Everclear (Pure Grain Alcohol), you can extract the Nic without any worry of glue like with the patches. I have made a few batches, and it seems to work pretty good. Has anyone else tried this?

[Programmer]

Originally Posted by TribbleTrouble

Another good source of known quantities of Nic is the carts for the Nicotrol Inhailer. Each cart contains 10 mg of Nic (4mg delivered when using the Inhailer).

A whole Nicotrol cart contains only 10mg total??? So hrmm to make a 30mL bottle of 36mg liquid I would need 108 of these little Nicotrol carts?? Wow I'm not sure how much those little guys cost but that's gotta be a chunk o' change. Not to mention that's a lot of soaking!

[TribbleTrouble]

Originally Posted by Programmer

A whole Nicotrol cart contains only 10mg total??? So hrmm to make a 30mL bottle of 36mg liquid I would need 108 of these little Nicotrol carts?? Wow I'm not sure how much those little guys cost but that's gotta be a chunk o' change. Not to mention that's a lot of soaking!

I used 20 cart inserts (200 mg), and reduced the solution to about 10 ml. Then I added 20 ml of VG and Vanilla extract to make 30 ml. That made a solution at about 6-7 mg of Nic per ml. It was weak, but it worked. If you buy just the carts from Canada, they are a little cheaper. I have also thought about making a inhailer cart/tobacco extract hybrid, but I haven't done that yet.