Future Tech of Vaping

[Visivicous]

A few days ago I stumbled across pbusardo's 2013 april fools video: A PBusardo Review - No Wick - No Wire - This IS A Game Changer - YouTube

While obviously a joke, it got me thinking of ways to do without a coil/wick setup. Something that could produce heat instantly at the push of a button. The only alternative that came to mind was lasers. I figure a laser based e-cig would need a few things to work properly:

1. A laser similar to what is found in the 'Wicked Laser'. I don't know if these things actually produce enough heat to vaporize a small amount of liquid (a drop or two) instantly, but I've seen them pop ballons at a distance, and set a napkin on fire.
2. A heating chamber, possibly pressurized, with one way valves that only open when needed, to allow air intake or exhaust.
3. An e-liquid pump, with a temperature guage. Basically, once the trigger/swith/button is released, the pump will inject the right amount of liquid into the heating chamber (once the temperature has gone back down).

I wish I knew how to use a sketch program to draw up what I have pictured, as I am sure this description is rather poor.

I do wonder if such a setup might work. Any engineers out there care to chime in?

 

[Verb]

I think there may be promise using an ultrasonic transducer to excite the eliquid into a vapor. It's been tried, but definitely not fully explored.

Battery tech always has a large gap to close.

Still tons to explore with juice feed, air flow routing, and wicking.

 

[RickAppling]

I have done some work with ultrasonics. And while it may be that someday I will be proven wrong. I do not believe that U/S will ever be feasible. So far it seems that it can only make a mist. Which works well for many things. But is not practical for vaping as the particle size is too large. I am not too sure about lasers either. I tried a few things with a 2W 450nm laser. It is no good for heating juice directly. Most of the energy passes right though. And heating up something else thing else brings up questions of thermo mass and lag. However a 20W laser with a wavelength of 900nm or more might work better. Many materials that are transparent to visible light are opaque in the infrared. Also all laser diodes generate a lot of waste heat. There is a crowd sourced project called Evoke using induction to heat a mesh which heats the juice. But so much about the project seems to point to it being, no pun intended vaporware.

 

[edyle]

This thread is probably gonna end up in the tin foil hat forum.

Anyway; what I think might happen is like in an ordinary kettle the coil is inside a kind of radiator shaped (I mean zigzag or snake like shape) enclosure, so the coil never burns out; you can clean the enclosure, which is usually called the heating element; you can physically scrub it or soak it in vinegar to get it back as new.

Bottom line: you never have to replace the coil; you just clean it like a kettle.

 

[rondasherrill]

I honestly do not see lasers being in any future incarnation of the e-cigarette. The fact is, a laser powerful enough to vaporize e-liquid instantly would be obscenely dangerous to have pointed at your face. Even if the laser is enclosed, there's always the risk of damage exposing it in some way.

I could kind of see a heating plate or grid, with a liquid injection system to spray a mist of e-liquid onto the plate.

We all know the next big venture will be temperature control, which shouldn't be TOO difficult. If I'm correct they already have temperature control for herbal vaporizers, and the tech isn't THAT different.

I wonder about these: http://www.yocantech.com/index.php?m=Product&a=show&id=5 They say they are for oils/wax, but I wonder if it could be made to work...

 

[GinnyTx]

I'm working on a flux capacitor one

like anything new, it'd sure be nice to not have the "maintenance" costs of coils/wicks, etc.

I'm intrigued by thought of ceramics, durable/reusable (that and I grew up in Potteries with my Dad) one of those like Rhonda's talking about above where it spritzs to it and is vaporized..

My sis the engineer says she's busy, and to quit bugging her about making me a renewable/reusable "green" vape *lol*

 

[PapaSloth]

I don't think the heating element/battery is really a problem. Resistive coils are a pretty efficient way to turn electricity into enough heat to vaporize eliquid. Most other solutions to that problem would be less efficient, not more so. Replacing the battery with a high density capacitor could be a win because it allows for quicker charging, and possibly higher amperage. But, that's going to require a breakthrough because capacitors just can't store as much energy per cubic centimeter as batteries right now.

There are two areas I can see some big improvements - temperature control, as rondasherrill mentioned, and wicking. You should be able to set a desired temperature instead of a desired voltage or wattage, and the coil should be held at that temperature. Using a thermocouple, this is actually pretty easy to do right now. It's only slightly more circuitry than what we have in variable wattage devices. This would be great because you could explicitly avoid temperatures at which acrolein and other bad chemicals are produced. You could even customize the temperature to match specific eliquids that have flavors which break down at different temperatures, or even to suit individual preferences.

The other area I can see some improvements is in wicking. Imagine an atomizer/control circuitry that requires a certain level of wick saturation to fire, or that adjusts the heat to compensate for a dry wick. No more dry hits, and no more scorched wick! You could also use some sort of micro pump to transfer juice from the tank to the wick to keep the wick saturated instead of relying on pressure differential or capillary action. We have the technology to create very tiny pumps and valves, and they could be powered by the same circuitry that controls the temperature coil.

Also, of course, your vaporizer should be internet enabled and should automatically order more eliquid for you when it starts running low as well as tracking how much you vape, how long you vape for, how much liquid you consume, and so on. If it dry burned its coils, rewicked and refilled itself on a schedule (like GinnyTX suggested), that would be good too.

One more: your gas tank knows how much gas is left, your juice tank should too Having to guess with a stainless steel tank is just poor design.