Combustion or Ignition---thoughts anyone?

[jlarsen]

fire - a chemical chain reaction with the evolution of heat and light. At least that's what they taught us in fire science. Steam will turn back into water. Will our vapor still be VG/PG, nicotine and flavoring? If yes, then I go with it just reached its boiling point and would not be combustion.

It seems that some percentage of the VG/PG, nicotine, and flavoring is absorbed by the lungs, and when we exhale, whatever isn't absorbed combined with water vapor is exhaled. Would it turn back into a liquid? I don't see any reason it wouldn't.

 

[jlarsen]

If our e-cigs operated with 100% physical reaction, our attys and cartos would last forever. So where does that buildup of crud on the coil come from that makes us toss our cartos and dry burn our attys?

I'm assuming that much of it is just dried up flavoring and coloring. There is probably a trace amount of juice and wicking material that is slowly burned. Regardless, even if there was no crud, attys and cartos won't last forever, the thin filaments will burn out. I've yet to have to toss an atty, between dry burning and washing them with water and alcohol, I've always managed to remove the crud. 99% of the time just blowing them out gets rid of the concentrated juice remaining in them. Of course I also don't use any voltage about 3.7, or low resistance attys, which from the comments by those that do use LR attys and high voltage PVs seem to have the most problems with burnt tastes and dying attys.

Combustion is an exothermic reaction, even without combustion there could be some endothermic chemical reactions occurring, maybe that is responsible for some "crud" production.

I've never seen an open flame shooting out of my PV, or exhaled smoke when vaping, so I'm assuming any combustion is minimal or non-existent.

 

[Zal42]

fire - a chemical chain reaction with the evolution of heat and light. At least that's what they taught us in fire science. Steam will turn back into water. Will our vapor still be VG/PG, nicotine and flavoring? If yes, then I go with it just reached its boiling point and would not be combustion.

Yes. When you condense the vapor, you get pg & vg back (and likely nicotine, too, but I haven't tested for that.) Some flavorings and colorings don't vaporize at all and remain in the atty, leading to fouling and the need to clean or replace it.

 

[jlarsen]

Yes. When you condense the vapor, you get pg & vg back (and likely nicotine, too, but I haven't tested for that.) Some flavorings and colorings don't vaporize at all and remain in the atty, leading to fouling and the need to clean or replace it.

I wish flavor suppliers would manufacture coloring free product lines for ejuice manufacturers, there is no reason to have coloring in ejuice. Coloring and flavoring are the big unknowns, but at least flavoring contributes something positive as well.