Nicotine calculation and Juice mixer

[Mihai]

Hey Toe (I always think of you when I look at the night sky...)

I think they're going on the assumption that we get all the nic because there's no sidestream smoke loss as there is with a burning cigarette, which loses nicotine while it's lying in an ashtray, or waved around or whatever. I don't think this is right - I like to see vapour, like to trickle it out my nose and love to blow smoke rings, all of which can be considered sidestream vapour. I'm sure I'm losing more than 2% just playing with it.

Emp

Yes,but don't forget you probably did the same with the cigarette

When they 'rate' the cigarettes they measure the amount of smoke that gets dragged like a smoker would drag (6 sec every 30 sec). No losses considered anywhere else. e-liquids are 'tuned' according to that measurement. so in the same conditions - the amount of nicotine that gets out at the end of e-cig or cig in one drag is the same. what you do with the smoke after that is another problem, but same for both ways of smoking.

 

[leaford]

Emp:

LOL, I think you're the first one who made that connection in years. Actually though, thats my parrots name, since we clip her wings, thats all she can bite!

What kind of Parrot? This makes three parrot owners hereabouts.

 

[toekuttr]

Mihai:

When they 'rate' the cigarettes they measure the amount of smoke that gets dragged like a smoker would drag (6 sec every 30 sec). No losses considered anywhere else. e-liquids are 'tuned' according to that measurement. so in the same conditions - the amount of nicotine that gets out at the end of e-cig or cig in one drag is the same.

Right, I agree with that too. I don't think though that all the nicotine inhaled is absorbed either in a real cigarette or an e-cig....but I also never read the test reports that claim no nicotine is left in the exhaled vapor either. Hopefully they'll do some further testing which isn't really "marketing disguised as a test". If you're exhaling smoke/vapor in a real cig or an e-cig I seriously doubt all the nicotine has even come in contact with any tissue at all. Thanks for the replies, and look for your opinions on that test TB posted too.

 

[TropicalBob]

Thanks for your research, Mihai. Yes, I'm certain the nicotine content is low in the cooked tobacco experiments I've done. Nicotine wasn't really my end goal. I wanted to capture the flavor of tobacco that I could then mix with glycerine and perhaps a liquid with known nicotine content. The stuff smells great, but I still don't get sufficient aftertaste.

I evaporated almost 95% of the most recent batch, leaving a really concentrated solution after distillation. At first, I was going to throw it out, but then I decided to go ahead and make a final solution using Bickford Kahlua and glycerine (and a lot of Kahlua liquor to thin the stuff). I used it for two days and found the taste very much to my liking. But I have no idea what it was doing to my blood nicotine level. If anything.

Again, appreciate your research on all this. We may end up HAVING to DIY and you might help us do just that.

 

[TheEmperorOfIceCream]

What kind of Parrot? This makes three parrot owners hereabouts.

Have any of you got a wooden leg?

 

[toekuttr]

Originally Posted by leaford:
What kind of Parrot? This makes three parrot owners hereabouts.

She's a 23 year old Severe. Thats a guestimate on her age though, as she was open-banded. I had an African too, but he (?) mysteriously died at 8.

 

[jigtg]

Sonic cleaner is a bit too expensive for me atm.
I'm not in to chemisty, but would this make any sense?

Idea is to evaporate water+nic and feed water back.

 

[dc2k08]

for those wishing to view this document easily online or for those without XL (me)..i have put it here
Google Docs - nicotine v101
hope you dont mihai. i will remove it if you want me too
thanks

 

[Mihai]

I don't mind at all. I actually wish to see as much things related to this going around freely.
Before registering in this forum I wanted to make a blog/forum only about diy ecigs, but as I haven't seen here any censorship yet about this subject I see no point doing it anymore.
It's sad that the other good forums (de, nl, au) don't allow discussion about this stuff... what's the point in censoring, for example, a link to bickford's site, what do they think is in brand carts, holy water??


@jigtg:

that thing looks like a distillation recipient. Not very sure how it would work. On a first guess I thing it's the best to keep at first the temp at water boiling point, to get rid of the water, and then to increase the temp over 247 C (nicotine boiling point). This way you could get rid of impurities, and have pure nicotine in the second part.
I will ask around, I'm not sure how nicotine vapors will react to very high temperature, on wikipedia it says they combust @ 35 deg C.


edit: I read again your message. Yes, you need some water with that nicotine but your device can't separate them that way- you can't feed back only the water, you'll feed back the whole solution. A distiller separates substances with different vaporization points.

...

ok, new idea
actually that thing might work for getting a pure water/nic solution, so that this device is to be used only instead of filtration. You'll need after this only to evaporate the water through classical methods (simmering).
It might work but I still think filtering it's safer, easier and cheaper (3-7 USD for 100 filters lab grade 20 um) than building and using that contraption.

ah, and ultrasonic cleaner was just an idea, it's not necessary I think. It just might speed up the initial dissolving of the nicotine in water.

 

[TropicalBob]

I did an easy distillation and have no idea what I got, but it tastes fine. I use a small 3-inch diameter pot. I put half a snus container in the middle of the pot. Surround the container with cooked tobacco liquid. Turn the lid of the pot upside down and lower it into place. Start simmering on low heat. The moisture collects on the lid underside, runs down to the little knob and drips into the snus lid. The stuff that dripped was pretty clear and verrrry gummy. I thinned it with alcohol, added my glycerine and smoked it.

As always, I have NO idea how much, if any, nicotine is present. That's a bummer.

 

[toekuttr]

Cool, thought everyone else forgot about this thread. Mihai, what did you make of the second test by Ruyan that TB posted, ever get a chance to read that?

 

[Mihai]

@TropicalBob:

I doubt you got there more than the nicotine from the snus. At simmering temperatures you couldn't evaporate more than the water and some volatile aromatic substances from the tobacco. To evaporate the nicotine you need more than 247 C (476.6 F). This is why you can concentrate the nicotine by simmering the solution - water evaporates and you are left with the nicotine.
A variant of this method (without placing the snus in the small container) might be ok for those that want 0 nic but also want real tobacco aroma.

@toekuttr:

I read the report, I forgot to report back.
Yeah, the wording sounds like an ad for RUYAN®
I haven't read many reports like this one so that might be ok, I can't tell, but I fell like it takes a bit from the seriousness I expect from a report like this. This aside, the report looks ok, those tests are a necessary step for this product. That guy does this kind of tests for a living and looks well grounded in the tobacco/smoking scene.

Regarding the exhaled nicotine I don't think any differences exist - it's all a matter of how long you keep the smoke/vapor inside. Considering the e-cigs I encountered until now, the vapors per puff are much thinner than smoke and in much smaller quantities so the amount exhaled is less, for the same amount of time per drag - maybe this is why 100% is claimed for e-cigs.

 

[jigtg]

Thinking about densities, can we remove tar etc. using a diy centrifuge?

@Mihai:
I agree. We do not want to make that high concentrations anyway.
According to wiki/E-cigarette e-liquid is 85% Propylene glycol
and only 6% nicotine. Could mixing filtered juice with Propylene glycol and
evaporating water make better final solution?
Only found 90mm VWR Grade 474 papers off ebay to europe at 8 pounds(w/ p&p). 5-10um paper would clog pretty nicely, eh?

@TropicalBob:
To clarify Mihai's point, water and nicotine do evaporate below boiling point, just slower.
See wiki/Image:Water_vapor_pressure_graph.jpg from wiki/Evaporate
and you will see that going 20 C up from 100 C nearly doubles vapor pressure.
I imagine nicotine would have similar exponential curve. You of course want the temperature
to be low enough not to evaporate(that fast) compounds you do not want.

 

[toekuttr]

Mihai:

I read the report, I forgot to report back.
Yeah, the wording sounds like an ad for RUYAN®
I haven't read many reports like this one so that might be ok, I can't tell, but I fell like it takes a bit from the seriousness I expect from a report like this. This aside, the report looks ok, those tests are a necessary step for this product. That guy does this kind of tests for a living and looks well grounded in the tobacco/smoking scene.

Regarding the exhaled nicotine I don't think any differences exist - it's all a matter of how long you keep the smoke/vapor inside. Considering the e-cigs I encountered until now, the vapors per puff are much thinner than smoke and in much smaller quantities so the amount exhaled is less, for the same amount of time per drag - maybe this is why 100% is claimed for e-cigs.

Yep Mihai, this ad disguised as a report illustrates that consumers are getting about 20% of the nicotine (IF 100% efficacy is achieved) that they get from a tobacco cig. Thats where, if you recall, I put the idea out that 100mg/ml would be a desirable goal for greater nic satisfaction.

The prospect of needing to puff 80-100 times to achieve anything close to a real cig can be time consuming, frustrating and possibly unhealthy. Getting more nic in a shorter, more efficient timespan would also lessen the amount PG inhaled and make for a more satisfying and healthy experience for many I believe. The side effects of so much PG most likely adds to the negative side effects myself and others are experiencing. JMHO of course, but I think the desired goal is a higher concentration of nicotine per ml.

I think whats needed, short of Black Leaf 40 , is a reliable extraction process that concentrates the nicotine and not just the easily extracted aromatics (although you want some of that too) that contain the carcinogens. VG sounds like a great idea too, but that alone doesn't solve the 80 puffs per dose issue either. Of course I could off base about some of this.

 

[Mihai]

uh, lots of ideas here, from you two. I'm afraid I am a bit overhelmed, this stuff is, for now, outside my knowledge and I don't like to make suppositions without the necessary background and some of these are complex issues.

Until then just a few short ideas regarding these:
- distillation seems overkill for nicotine extraction. Just plain simmering should be enough, TBob said he managed to get the solution to evaporate very fast. The only prob is with the impurities which should be solved with filtering.

- no matter what you want from that solution you should aim to get as much nicotine from your tobacco as possible. If you don't have a source of cheap, raw, tobacco, it will get expensive (not as commercial e-liquid, but why waste). 40 g of pipe tobacco costs here (where cigs are still cheap @ 1.8 EUR) 8 eur or more. You can get from this at best 500 mg nicotine. @24mg/ml this means your home cooked juice will cost just from this 0.4 eur / ml. This looks close to expensive to me, considering you put there other stuff and waste time preparing it.

- I think you gain nothing by mixing the filtered juice with propylene and then evaporate water. A shourtcut might be to try to dissolve the nicotine directly in PG but, besides the fact that I don't know what could be the efficiency rates for this, you will curse the idea when you try to filter the resulting solution - the more viscous is the solution, the harder will filter - looking at water and PG it will be a matter of minutes vs hours/days for a fine filter.

- wiki is wrong, 6% means 60mg/ml. I wish someone to sell this but I couldn't find it. The max advertised on the e-liquids I know is 2.4% (24mg/ml)

- you _want_ a concentrated nicotine solution - this means it will have less water which doesn't make goood vapours in e-cigs. From our point of view it's an inert element we have to get rid of. If you need less nicotine in your mix you just put more PG or VG on the same concentrated solution.

- I don't know what grade is 474 filter, I haven't researched this yet, I just looked around to see what other 'e-cig taxes' I have to pay later I found some filters @ 3-5 USD on Amazon and on some school lab supply sites. The diameter of the filter doesn't matter too much, it depends on your recipient, I'm sure you'll manage to match whatever diameter you buy with some recipient. If you already bought that let me know how well works, try first with just water. If you didn't then try to find something larger - 20 um or so. I haven't tried this yet but my father tells me that for less than 20 um you'll need a vacuum pump, or a lot of patience.

- nicotine might have a similar evaporation graph but considering the different the different solidification and vaporization temperatures and extrapolating from the one you quoted the pressure at simmering temperature (90 deg C) will be less than 100torr. This means not much nicotine is evaporating. In my table I put a 85% default for 'recovery efficiency'. I still think it should be less that 15%, maybe 5, max 10% loses in nicotine.
If you evaporate the solution at less, say 70-80 deg, you should definitely increase the 'recovery efficiency' to at least 90%
A lower evaporation temperature might be good also for tobacco aroma. Of course the 10-20 deg difference might not mean anything, I have no idea what else is there and what vaporisation points they have so it's just a guess that it should be better, based on that graph

- Those nic intake levels are just marketing talk, at least in that report. From all the sites I saw e-cig.com has the most reasonable claims about the equivalences. They say 1 cig equals 0.1 ml e-liquid, so a 1.3 ml e-pen cart is about 12-13 cigarettes. This is almost what you see the users say. All other sellers claim 1-3 packs per e-pen cart which is rubbish.
According to this, if you use 24mg/ml e-liquid, you will inhale in 10 drags 2.4 mg of nicotine, which is about what you get from a normal cigarette.

If the claims of other producers are true (let me see an unpaid review claiming 2 packs per e-pen cart and I’ll eat my e-cig) then you will get roughly 2-6 times less: 1.2 – 0.4 mg nicotine per equivalent cigarette.
To put in another form: if you were a 40 cigs a day smoker and you can entretain youself now with just one cart a day then yes, you get about 4 times less nicotine than before. A 100mg/ml liquid would be, just in this hypothetical case, what you need. But I’m sure it’s not the case.


The problem you have (I have the same problem with e-cigs) that you don't feel the kick is not because the liquid doesn’t contain enough nicotine but because the vapour is too thin, it doesn’t have the tar to iritate and the taste you associate with smoke. you also don’t have the normal visual feed back you are used with.
Increasing your nicotine intake, and I am certain you would with 100mg/ml liquid, won’t do you any good. We need to find better devices (see the movie I put in the general forum in the ‘more or less vapour’ thread) and a harsher taste. For the first part I will buy soon a Janty and modify it, if necessary; for the second I will try some experiments with adding some pepper essential oil to my liquid



For now I will take a break from tinkering and researching this, I'm struggling to find a holiday somewhere... anywhere at this point, I just want to leave on 15 Aug. I thought it's easier but it seems not. The last 8 days I did only this, exclusively, 12 hours per day; paid 3 times, 3 times got my money back cause there were no vacancies... anyways, next months I will have plenty of time, BBC has closed it's Romanian Service 3 days ago, so I'm out of the job, I just need to sat alone in the building to deal with contractors and other partners until I turn off the light for the last time in December

Until then keep experimenting but, please, try to be safe

btw, can you tell that in the last three days I haven't written any reportage? LOL so... sorry for the long post

 

[TropicalBob]

Many years ago, a newspaper I worked for closed the bureau operation I was in charge of. I sat in my office while 14 of 17 people under me were fired. I was saved for a move to the main office, but I was told to stay with the bureau building until it was sold.

All the furniture from the huge office was removed except a typewriter table, a single typewriter and one chair for me. A single black telephone sat on the floor. I went to work each morning on time, left each evening on time -- for three months.

I had no work friends. Nothing to do. It's a terrible feeling and I feel for you. Everywhere I look today, your situation is being repeated.

 

[toekuttr]

Mihai:

The problem you have (I have the same problem with e-cigs) that you don't feel the kick is not because the liquid doesn’t contain enough nicotine but because the vapour is too thin, it doesn’t have the tar to iritate and the taste you associate with smoke. you also don’t have the normal visual feed back you are used with.

Thanks for the response again Mihai. Perhaps this is the case, although it seems odd to me that a company would try to sell something in reverse; telling you it has less of what you want instead of the other way around......stranger things have happened though (are we reading the same "report" from Ruyan?). The funny thing is I get all the nicotine I need and can feel it from OTP and even NRTs (all smokeless). In any case, thanks again and good luck with the vacationing!

BTW, I never thought distilling a solid was a workable idea for the diy brewer.

 

[Mihai]

that part was a mistake, I will edit it, I was thinking at something else.
Nicotine gets solid at -70C or something like this.
I was thinking that, in the original document, when they used sulphuric acid to concentrate, they were left with nicotine crystals and they added a bit of distilled water to make it liquid again. But those were nicotine sulfate salts which are pretty different from what you get from simmering just water and nicotine.


I'm pretty sure we read the same document, it depends who you sell it too and what you want to be your selling points:

First off - that document will be used to get approval from authorities, so they want to show that there is no chance of overdosing. Most consumers don't read papers like this and those who do read them are a minority so small that doesn't count.

Secondly - even for consumers it might sound good that there is less nicotine in these, they might think it's healthier - not only you have less carcinogens but you also get less nicotine, but still getting enough.
I never heard any smoker complaining about the nicotine content of the cigarettes. To tell you the truth, until I found the e-cig and the related forums, even if I am a 40-a-day smoker for more than 20 years, I never thought about it. I only tried to get the lowest rated nicotine content cigarettes that are still smokable, thinking they must be healthier
People conscious about their addiction are a small minority, so, again, it doesn't matter for Ruyan.

 

[Mihai]

Mihai:
BTW, I never thought distilling a solid was a workable idea for the diy brewer.

I corrected it, it was incorrect, thanks for reminding me.

Anyway, regarding what you said - think about water-sugar or water-salt solution, or any solid that dissolves in another liquid without a chemical reaction. It shouldn't be that hard to extract the water

 

[jigtg]

Bought 11um Whatman No.1(11cm).

What kind of accuracy do we need for pH testing?
Universal litmus paper gets you down to 0.15pH accuracy.
0.01pH accuracy aquarium probes cost around 15 euro while meters itself are more expensive.
See 66pacific.com/ph/simplest_ph.aspx for a diy circuit. IMHO, that
circuit is a bit oversimplified so it might start to drift when batteries run
out. Problem with glass electrodes seem to be that you need quite lots of liquid to
be able to measure. Tens of mls I guess. Calibration and maintenance are also required.
wiki/PH_meter and wiki/Glass_electrode for more enlightment.
Some 3ml pipettes and glass test tubes with caps are on my shopping list also. 35 euro total.

I will be using thermocouples for temperature measuring. You need:
-30 cm(or more) of thermocouple wire with one end welded(instructables shows how to do this by yourself if needed)
-ice water
-multimeter
-some wire

Check omega.com/temperature/z/pdf/z021-032.pdf ,
srdata.nist.gov/its90/download/type_k.tab ,
srdata.nist.gov/its90/download/type_j.tab and
srdata.nist.gov/its90/download/type_t.tab .
Because of the tiny size, these should be suitable for measuring
atomizer temperatures as well
cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370026694277 as an example.