opinions on wick

[tw33k]

The way I look at it is this: I smoked cigarettes for 21 years fully aware that I was inhaling chemicals known to cause cancer but it never stopped me. I reckon regularly inhaling anything other than air has the potential to do harm but that's not going to stop me vaping. The OP is just going too far IMO, particularly if he was an ex-smoker. You smoked cigarettes for however long and now suddenly you are worried about what you are inhaling? My suggestion is to not vape at all if you're that concerned.

 

[Rawz]

Ekowool is silica, right. Just a very good version of it.
And the boton line is simple what vapdivrr said.
Still, let's keep on. You guys will be able to analize the vapor from cotton wicks? Thats a great idea.

Enviado de meu MZ605 usando Tapatalk

 

[happydave]

The way I look at it is this: I smoked cigarettes for 21 years fully aware that I was inhaling chemicals known to cause cancer but it never stopped me. I reckon regularly inhaling anything other than air has the potential to do harm but that's not going to stop me vaping. The OP is just going too far IMO, particularly if he was an ex-smoker. You smoked cigarettes for however long and now suddenly you are worried about what you are inhaling? My suggestion is to not vape at all if you're that concerned.

i was smoker for 10 years. but that does not mean i totally gave up on my health.
vaping is a reduced harm alternative to tobacco.
vaping does come with some risks. as doctors start to deal with the adverse health effects of vaping, its going to be important to understand exactly what these people are using. doctors might see a number of people who all have the same condition that was caused by vaping on cotton wicks, and make some generalizations about the health effects of vaping. when in fact its only a select group of vapers who choose to use cotton for wick. so its important that we study and analyze what effect all of these different components will have on our heath.
everyone knows how bad smoking tobacco is. i would bet vaping on cotton wick is still better for you than smoking tobacco.
but how much better for your health? we dont know!
does silica produce a cleaner vapor than cotton? we dont know!
as of 2 days ago people would swear up and down that the cotton was not burning at all.. and how i have proof that it is burning.
i can tell you that the Amorphous Silica we use for wick will not burn when used in an e-cig because the wire we use would melt before the silica started to burn.

if you want to vape on cotton wicks i see no problem with that because your an adult and you can make your own decisions.

if i can get a cleaner vapor from using silica im going to use it, i don't know why you wouldn't go for the healthiest option.
cigarette manufactures have yet to come up with a less toxic cigarette, if they had i would have switched immediately.
all im looking to do is relax and catch a buzz, not end up as a coffin stuffer at the ripe old age for 35.

 

[_sidekick_]

While the silica may not burn, we have seen that it does release fibers. There are pictures floating around of a negative image inside of a top cap after using silica wick. The top cap is covered in small fibers from the silica wick. Those fibers are most likely inhaled. Those fibers being stuck in your airway/lungs is likely not healthy. Asbestos fiber inhalation does cause cancer and while it is a totally different material, how do we know that the silica fibers will not do the same? I'm just playing devil's advocate here, because you seem to be so against cotton, while silica may have health risks as well.

 

[happydave]

You can't compare silica fibers to asbestos fibers.

 

[leerm8680]

You can't compare silica fibers to asbestos fibers.

Why not?

Industrial fibers. Both used for legitimate purposes in industry.
then....
One of the them turns out to cause cancer. This fact was previously unknown.

From what I gather from the previous posts, you could replace silica with cotton:

Industrial fibers. Both used for legitimate purposes in industry.
then....
One of the them turns out to cause cancer. This fact was previously unknown.
But what about the other fiber?

 

[_sidekick_]

You can't compare silica fibers to asbestos fibers.

I understand they are completely different, I stated so in my post. Do you have any data on the inhalation of silica fibers though? You completely ignored the point of my post.

 

[happydave]

I understand they are completely different, I stated so in my post. Do you have any data on the inhalation of silica fibers though? You completely ignored the point of my post.

me personally? no. but there is quite a bit already out on the web.
Let me google that for you

this one looks pretty good http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s002040100266

THIS ONE IS GOLD http://www.solvay.com/en/binaries/Synthetic_amorphous_silica_GPS_rev0_sept12_RHD-139563.pdf

 

[happydave]

Why not?

Industrial fibers. Both used for legitimate purposes in industry.
then....
One of the them turns out to cause cancer. This fact was previously unknown.

From what I gather from the previous posts, you could replace silica with cotton:

Industrial fibers. Both used for legitimate purposes in industry.
then....
One of the them turns out to cause cancer. This fact was previously unknown.
But what about the other fiber?

actually humans have known that asbestos is hazardous for almost 2000 years
Asbestos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Fulgurant]

The problem with that video you posted is that he doesn't even keep the wick saturated. You can see the coils glowing, AKA getting MUCH hotter than they will when the wick is completely wet with eliquid. Have you ever heard of latent heat?

Yeah, the temperature doesn't start to leap up until towards the end of the video, when you can see the coils glow. According to Dave, the danger zone is ~150 degrees Celcius, which works out to about 302 degrees Farenheit. It's hard to say exactly when the coil becomes dry, because the guy bobbles his mod out of the camera's view, but the temperature reading is ~249 farenheit at the first moment I see a coil glow (@ 0:33). When the coil's saturated, it's nowhere close to a dangerous temperature.

Which makes perfectly good sense to me, because I always heard that e-cig coils operate at about 65 degrees Celcius. Of course people at the high end will probably push higher temperatures than that, but clearly you don't need to hit the boiling point of VG, which is a very good thing, because if we were routinely reaching the boiling point of VG, we would all risk acrolein poisoning.

Also, there's this: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/drugs/Scienceresearch/UCM173250.pdf

The temperature of the heating element in each e-cigarette was determined by inserting a thermocouple and then activating the e-cigarette by drawing air through it. These temperatures ranged from 40 to 65°C. HSGC-MS analysis was conducted at 60°C to simulate the temperature that would be encountered during activation of an e-cigarette.

And this: http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...mperatures-do-atomizers-reach.html#post101307

I can't say for sure that cotton's totally safe, but the OP's concerns appear vastly overblown.

 

[happydave]

please explain to me to the best of your ability why VG would not need to reach the boiling point of VG in order to produce vapor.

 

[Fulgurant]

please explain to me to the best of your ability why VG would not need to reach the boiling point of VG in order to produce vapor.

Well, given that we know you don't need to reach the boiling point of VG to vaporize e-liquid, I imagine the answer is some combination of air pressure, evaporation and an aerosol/misting effect. That is, when we draw air through the atomizer, we decrease the air pressure inside it, which reduces the effective boiling point, which helps the coil to heat the molecules at the surface of the liquid to a point where their evaporation is vastly accelerated. Then we draw the relevant particles from a hot environment (near the coil) to a relatively cooler one (the chimney of the atomizer/drip tip, for lack of a better term), and then again to a warm environment (our lungs), where the vapor mingles with even more moisture, and then finally we blow it out into a cool environment (the ambient air).

Ever wondered why the vapor produced from the coil when you simply hit the fire button without drawing is so much less substantial than the vapor you exhale after a pull on your PV?

I'm not an expert, clearly, but whether my answer's close to the truth or not, the temperature's been measured. It's not as high as you think.

 

[happydave]

air pressure?
so the boiling point of VG at 1 atmosphere or 14.7 PSI is 290°C
according to the FDA the temp inside of the e-cig that they tested was 40 to 65°C
lets say for example it was a constant 65°C
VG would need to be at 0.003157 atmosphere or about 0.04 PSI in order to boil at 65°C (roughly)
0.04 PSI is some where between 99.00 and 99.70 percent vacuum.
to give you an idea outer space is not 100 percent vacuum.
Vacuum Pressure - Converting Units
but lets just say for fun you some how are able to pull a %50 vacuum with your own lung power, the boiling point of VG is still 250°C.
a Dyson vacuum cleaner can not pull a %50 vacuum.

liquids and gases have a wonderful property known as Entrainment. i believe this is more or less what you are going for. i would say it plays a major roll in how an atomizer works. but this does not change that the fact that if you want to take a liquid and turn it into a gas you need to boil it.
Entrainment (engineering) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Fulgurant]

air pressure?
so the boiling point of VG at 1 atm or 14.7 PSI is 290°C
according to the FDA the temp inside of the e-cig that they tested was 40 to 65°C
lets say for example it was a constant 65°C
VG would need to be at 0.003157 atmosphere or about 0.04 PSI in order to boil at 65°C (roughly)
0.04 PSI is some where between 99.00 and 99.70 percent vacuum.
to give you an idea outer space is not 100 percent vacuum.
Vacuum Pressure - Converting Units
but lets just say for fun you some how are able to pull a %50 vacuum with your own lung power, the boiling point of VG is still 250°C.
a Dyson vacuum cleaner can not pull a %50 vacuum.

liquids and gases have a wonderful property known as Entrainment. i believe this is more or less what you are going for. i would say it plays a major roll in how an atomizer works. but this does not change that the fact that if you want to take a liquid and turn it into a gas you need to boil it.
Entrainment (engineering) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As I suspected, you commence with the nitpickery, no doubt in a futile effort to save face. That's cool, dude. We're all very impressed with your mastery of wikipedia -- but the fact remains that the FDA measured the temperature of an ecig coil and determined that the fairest approximation of ecig use would require a temperature of 60 degrees Celcius.

I indulged your request for a speculative description of the inner workings of an ecig, but my ability to describe the process is utterly irrelevant in the face of the empirical fact presented in a previous post. So, I'm glad you're getting a chuckle out of picking my theory apart, but I'm not really interested in playing the game any longer.

I'm sure the scientific community will be astounded to learn that evaporation cannot occur without boiling, by the way.

 

[happydave]

so here is how this goes. ..when you hit the power, the e-liquid boils. this sends tiny partials of VG gas into the atmosphere.
PG and VG are both hygroscopic (meaning they absorb water). so these tiny little partials pick some water VAPOR and become larger.
the larger the partials become the more they will refract light and become visible to the eye.
you can experiment with this effect by going in your bath room turning on the shower all the way to hot and vaping, but you do this AT YOUR OWN RISK. last time i tried it i found it hard to find the door knob out because the fog was so thick and when i opened the door the fire alarm went off because the fog was so thick it tripped the optical sensor in my fire alarm...

 

[happydave]

this is how science works.... someones says, "i think it works this way" and that is a theory until its proven or disproved. if you suggest a theory and its wrong its nothing to get upset about. because even if your theory is wrong you have helped in the process of elimination, so you or others can move forward with new ideas.

 

[happydave]

just in case anyone was wondering what 60 something degrees Celsius does to a silica wick loaded with VG. it made no vapor what so ever. i got the temp to stay under 70 degrees Celsius for a few minutes.
and blowing on it only lowered the temperature.

 

[happydave]

in this video you can actually watch e-liquid boil off and turn into vapor.

keep your eyes on the surface of the coil. you can see bubbles form and disappear rapidly as they turn into vapor.

this is a 2.3 ohm micro coil at 3.3 volts, 4.7 watts.
(you would not really vape a build like this at 4.7 watts 6-9 watts would be an optimal range).

i have been trying to film this effect for a while now it was bit tricky because the vapor produced messes with the focus of the camera. that hum in the background is a fan, it was in place to draw the vapor away quickly to prevent the camera from trying to focus on the vapor when im trying to get a good shot of the coil.

 

[Fulgurant]

this is how science works.... someones says, "i think it works this way" and that is a theory until its proven or disproved. if you suggest a theory and its wrong its nothing to get upset about. because even if your theory is wrong you have helped in the process of elimination, so you or others can move forward with new ideas.

Perhaps, but no one here (except, perhaps, you) particularly cares whether a bunch of amateurs can assemble a precise and exhaustive description of the inner workings of an e-cig. The science, in this case, is already established; I'm vaping on the fruit of that established science right now. The only reason this entire line of discussion started is that you insisted that cotton's unsafe, on the basis that an ecig coil must heat to VG's boiling point.

We have evidence to disprove that theory. So whether the best technical description of the ecig's vaporization process involves evaporation, misting, entrainment, or fairy farts frankly doesn't matter. The important thing is that no one reading this thread flies into a panic attack because he's been using cotton in his RDA.

That's why I got annoyed. I read your voyage of discovery as a patronizing evasion: "if you can't explain exactly how an ecig works, then any evidence you cite doesn't matter!" If I misread you, then I apologize.

As for your picture, you're trying to heat a wet silica wick in a dry pan, correct? And you think that's a valid way to test whether a tiny coil that's effectively submerged might excite the surface molecules of a very thin layer of VG to escape without getting terribly hot itself? An ecig coil doesn't have to heat the entire wick to the point at which the liquid boils; it just has to transfer enough energy to a relatively tiny amount of eliquid to vaporize it, before the coil is cooled once again by the oozing tide of new liquid.

If you really remain convinced that everyone else is wrong, then buy yourself an infrared thermometer (like this guy did), and come back with evidence that your atty's coil rises anywhere near 150C. Then maybe we can all have a great time playing the armchair-technical-expert game to explain your findings.

 

[happydave]

"An ecig coil doesn't have to heat the entire wick" well i did, to 66.2 degrees Celsius and it still made 0 amounts of vapor...

i dont CARE what you do with your e-cig. you could use whatever you want for wick, why your still here giving me questions is BEYOND me.

im not trying to cause a panic. im sick of all of the conjecture that surrounds us.
2 days ago i could get on ECF or go to my local vape shop and ask, "if i use cotton for wick, am i burning the cotton at all". the answer i got every single time was NO you are fine as long as you keep it wet. now i have photos that show this is NOT the case and you are in fact burning cotton, no matter how wet you keep the wick. EVERYONE was under the impression that no thermal decomposition of the cotton was occurring WITHOUT any real hard evidence to back it up. a $10 30x jeweler's loupe is enough to see that you are in fact burning the cotton.