Tobacco as core material

[TropicalBob]

The idea behind Premeire, Eclipse, Accord and Heatbar devices led to an experiment for me. All of these smokeless cigarettes were made by Big Tobacco; each did not burn tobacco. Each device heated tobacco coated with glycerine to produce a vapor, which a smoker inhaled. A tiny piece of charcoal at the front end of the cigarette was lit and provided heat to vaporize nicotine from the soaked tobacco. Think of the charcoal as a cave man's atomizer.

As I thought of this, I looked at my e-cig. All the components of Big Tobacco's Eclipse are there. What if?

I used tweezers to remove a used core from a cartridge. Then I soaked some loose pipe tobacco in vegetable glycerine (one teaspoon filled with tobacco and covered with gooey vegetable glycerine). It takes hours for the tobacco to absorb the liquid. Then -- very messy -- I put that soaked tobacco into the empty cartridge core.

It must be stuffed very tight. I used the head of a nail to repeatedly tamp down the wet tobacco, until it was tightly compacted and remained at a level that would not touch an atomizer.

It worked. Glycerine, of course, produces large amounts of vapor, and my tobacco-based e-cig made heavy exhalations of vapor. I realized refilling the cart would be a major chore, so I emptied a second core and put more soaked tobacco in it.

I had hoped to obtain tobacco flavor by this method. That's what's missing in everything I've tried over the past 11 months. But, nope, the glycerine so dominates flavor with its sweetness that I can't say this experience was like smoking a cigarette.

There are a lot of unknowns in doing this: How much nicotine am I getting? I don't know exactly, but I believe I could feel it. An Eclipse cigarette has 0.2mg of nicotine, well below the brand I used to smoke at 0.9mg. Still, the nicotine blood level is affected. In clinical tests, Eclipse boosted blood nicotine by 23.7 ng/ml, even higher than most conventional brands (12-15 ng/ml).

Next I'll substitute Bickford Kahlua with propylene glycol instead of the VG. I'm sure I know the flavor will be powerful. I'll try to see if the satisfaction improves over commericial cartridges. (I'm puffing Bickford Kahlua-soaked tobacco as I type and it tastes great.)

I continue to add liquid to the packed tobacco cores, continuing to keep those cores tightly packed and untouched by the atomizer parts. It's no more trouble than dripping. Atomization continues to work well. We shall see.

If liquid imports get in legal trouble ... I now know what my alternative will be.

[smokindeuce]

That's interesting Bob - I hadn't thought to try that.

A while ago I tried tobacco soaked in e liquid in a vapourising pipe, but didn't get on so well with it. Although it did work to some extent, the temperatures reached were inconsistent and generally too high to be useful. Over heating glycerine can also produce acrolein (v.toxic carcinogen) which generally put me off the idea any further.

In terms of flavour, vapourising the tobacco tasted more like burnt raisins, which wasn't altogether unpleasant, but having the tobacco around the place mean't I was constantly tempted to just revert to analogues and seemed to defeat the object!

[Bertrand]

Cigarette tobacco might work better for this. It contains a lot of reconstituted tobacco which has already been dissolved in solvent:

YouTube - What's inside a US blended cigarette?

[TropicalBob]

What I might do next time is go for the highest nicotine rating, which would come from American Spirit tobacco. The pipe tobacco burley I used is quite high in nic, and I'm not "smoking" it, of course. I'm vaporizing glycerine. But the higher the nic content, the better it might be absorbed into the glycerine.

[TropicalBob]

After a couple of days, observations make me conclude I'll not continue doing this.

First off, tobacco must be incredibly dirty stuff. The glycerine not only absorbs whatever nicotine it can hold, but must get some non-combustible tars. When I remove the cart with tobacco and replace it with one with white filter material, the white filter soon darkens, the same as when I used to use crappy E-Cig liquids. That's a kind of "dirt" I don't want in my lungs.

And I fear for any atomizer used to vaporize tobacco for long. Eclipse was, after all, use it and toss it! Tobacco might work best only in a disposable e-cig. (I can see Big Tobacco's ears perk up!)

This was really only another experiment of many I've tried. Conclusion: Yes, it works. No, it isn't nearly as good as regular cart with quality e-liquid. Bottom line: Failure.