First of all, I hope praxeologist takes any criticism here as constructive.
I have wanted to see, for a long time, someone willing to take the WTA ball and run with it. While I have at times mused over the possibility of marketing WTA myself, I am fairly on record as saying that I don't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. I am a senior chemist and have been in the business for 25 years, the last 20 with the same outfit. I'm certainly not going to chuck it all and start selling eliquid in a charged environment where the FDA would most certainly not be my friend.
That praxeologist wishes to market a WTA eliquid is, again, encouraging. The fact that he's come quite suddenly to an established community (VF) that likely has a good bit of member overlap with the "other" community (ECF) complete with products and prices was probably a bit of a ham-fisted mistake. The issues are three-fold, 1) trust, and 2) the old saying, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", and 3) Communication.
There is a good reason that Tropical Bob mentioned earlier in this thread that he trusts me not to kill him with my liquid. My development of WTA was not something that sprang one day fully-formed like Pegasus from the foam of the water as the blood of Medusa hit the waves (sorry for the Greek mythology reference).
I didn't one day pop up and announce WTA, but rather WTA sprang from a very long conversation held in public that evolved and transformed over time. The folks involved with that discussion could watch in real time as issues were considered, discussed, and new ideas tossed around. It was during these discussions that I hit on the theory that nicotine only eliquid did not work for some people because nicotine is only one of a number of psychoactive alkaloids present in tobacco. As one of the principal contributors to the thread, I presented this theory, and had the trust of the folks there already in hand, earned via my participation and presentation of many ideas on ECF.
My theory on WTA represented an extraordinary claim. I had been considering why some folks do so well with snus that they quit vaping completely and stick to snus only, and why some folks just can't get satisfaction from nicotine eliquid even if they chase higher and higher levels of nicotine until they vape themselves sick. Clearly something was different with snus versus nicotine eliquid. That's about when the fact that tobacco contains a whole mixture of psychoactive alkaloids started to nag at me. Like many theories, it hit me in a moment. The problem became, "How do I make an eliquid that is more like snus?" Or more to the point, "How do I make an eliquid that contains the same spread of alkaloids that snus contains?". This is where I said to myself, "Handy thing I'm a chemist with a quarter century in lab settings!".
I used a physical process (extraction) to create the crude alkaloid mixture. This mixture had the alkaloids in it alright, there was no way it couldn't. Alkaloids are particularly easy compounds to extract from a starting material (in this case tobacco). So now I had this flask of solvent, tobacco alkaloids, other organic components of tobacco, and quite a bit of probably waxy junk from the plant itself. Would I strip off the solvent and mix the resulting residue with PG and vape it? No way. While I had the alkaloids, I also had quite a bit of junk that co-extracted from the tobacco that I didn't want to be vaping.
The principle and methods of acid/base partitioning is well established in organic chemistry, and I went to this well-proven methodology. How do you get alkaloids to come out of a non-water soluble organic solvent and dissolve instead in water? You add acidic water and shake it all up. The alkaloids are converted to salts which really want to dissolve into the water instead of stay with the solvent. So now you have two layers, one being acidic water containing alkaloid salts, and one being the organic extraction solvent. The neat thing is this. Most of the "neutral" non alkaloid junk stays with the extraction solvent layer. I simply saved the acidic water layer and threw away the organic extraction solvent, it had done it's job and was no longer needed.
So the alkaloid salts are dissolved in the acidic water, but some undesirable junk from the tobacco also preferred the acidic water layer. The alkaloids are cleaner than they were, but they're not clean. What to do? Simple. Add base to the acidic water containing alkaloid salts until the water becomes strongly basic. This frees the alkaloids from the salt form and now they're dissolved in the water as free-base alkaloids. It happens that free base alkaloids would much rather be dissolved in the extraction solvent than in water.
So what do I do? I add some clean/unused extraction solvent to the basic water containing the free alkaloids and I shake it up again. The alkaloids strongly prefer to be in the organic solvent so they leave the water and migrate to the solvent. The non-alkaloid junk that preferred the water stay behind in the water layer which gets thrown out.
So now I have free alkaloids in organic solvent. The junk that prefers organic solvent got left behind when I moved the alkaloids to the acidic water as salts, and the junk that came over to the water with the alkaloid salts got left behind in the water when I added base and shook everything up to bring the free alkaloids back to the organic solvent. This whole foolery is known as "Acid/Base Partitioning".
By now the alkaloids are fairly pure having gone through one back and forth cycle. Not good enough for me. I repeated the back and forth cycle, and repeated it again. By the last cycle, the throwaway layer was clean and colorless, there was no more "junk" to be gotten rid of. The organic solvent layer now contained only: 1) organic solvent, 2) tobacco alkaloids, 3) some traces of water that needed to be removed.
How to get rid of the water? I don't want it ending up as an impurity in the alkaloids. Simple, run the solvent/alkaloid mixture through a glass column containing an ultrapure hygroscopic inorganic crystalline salt. As the solvent/alkaloids/traces of water fall through the crystalline matrix, the crystals absorb the water thus "drying" the solvent/alkaloid mixture.
I now have maybe 50 mL of pale yellow alkaloid containing solvent that has been stripped of water.
At this point, the sum total of things that have touched the tobacco include:
1. Water
2. Solvent
3. Sodium Carbonate
4. Dilute sulfuric acid
5. Dilute sodium hydroxide
6. drying crystals
It's a good exercise to ask myself, In this mixture of solvent and alkaloids, what quantity, if any, of the other materials might be present.
Water? Nope, I removed it via the drying column, and even if it was in there, it's just water.
Solvent? Of course, I have the alkaloids purified and dissolved in the solvent currently.
Sodium Carbonate? Nope, that was used in the initial extraction to make sure the alkaloids went into the solvent. It largely stayed with the spent tobacco, and any that might have gotten in the extract would have been removed by the 3 partition cycles and washed away with the water.
Dilute sulfuric acid? Sounds really scary. It isn't. In the last partition cycle, the final addition of sodium hydroxide neutralized it to sodium sulfate which is strongly water soluble.
Dilute sodium hydroxide? There was a bit in the wet solvent/alkaloid mixture, however the drying column grabbed all of the water, and with it, the sodium hydroxide.
So what's left? solvent and alkaloids.
The next step is to remove the solvent via evaporation. A chemist won't just leave the stuff sitting on a shelf to evaporate, we'll use an apparatus to drive the solvent off. Once the solvent has been driven off and the remaining alkaloids remain at the same volume for an extended time (indicating no more solvent, you don't want solvent!), all that is left is a beautiful amber to copper colored puddle of alkaloids derived from whole tobacco.
Say hello to whole tobacco alkaloids, WTA. This WTA can then be determined for purity by titrating a precisely measured amount. After that, it's time to mix it up with my favorite mix of PG/VG to the desired concentration. In the initial extraction I did, I chose 30 mg/mL total whole tobacco alkaloids in VG/PG.
What about extraordinary proof? All I've done is a bunch of chemistry, I haven't proven a damned thing about whether this stuff will slay the beast for folks who can't get satisfaction from nicotine only eliquid. I could test on myself. I'm confident that the eliquid I've created doesn't have anything in it but PG/VG and alkaloids that we used to suck up greedily when we smoked our analogs. But dammit, I do fine with nicotine only eliquid. I need a guinea pig who goes crazy and wants cigarettes anyway when they vape nicotine only liquid.
Now I have a moral question to answer. I know I've not produced a noxious potion, but this stuff does contain a bunch of alkaloids, not just nicotine. What to do? Find a volunteer and fully explain that while I've got years of experience doing this sort of thing, and I believe the liquid contains this this and this and not other things I don't want, that nothing in life is 100% guaranteed. In short, I need somebody who trusts me, and I have to be certain I'm deserving of that trust.
Enter Vaporer as he's called over on ECF. I send him the stuff at 30 mg/mL, and he agrees to try to get through several days with only the WTA liquid. He soon reports that he's mellow, and he's loving the effect of this essentially UNFLAVORED liquid. He soon calls it "liquid analogs" due to the tobacco-like throat hit and to this day speaks lovingly and longingly of the experience.
That's encouraging, I say. But I need more. I need to find three of the most hardened ex-smoker vapers I can find. These guys need to be the type who would rub snus into their navels to get relief from the tobacco cravings... real tobacco desperados. Enter Twisted Victor, Tropical Bob, and OlderThanDirt. Each agree to attempt to use just the WTA liquid, and they enter their daily impressions into a Google spreadsheet. Bob and Vic love it, OTD isn't so enthusiastic, he feels good effects, but he really loves snus and misses it.
Extraordinary proof? Dunno, but Vic especially had been feeling like a hollow shell of a person, vaping up close to 100 mg at times trying to slay the tobacco demon. Vic reports coming back to life. This will have to serve as "proof", perhaps not extraordinary, but as they say, "All signs point to yes".
None of these testers paid a cent, though later Vic did insist on sending me a little something in appreciation for getting his life back and for my effort. He's now happily using snus and loving it.
What was that third thing? Communication. Very simply, the whole process was carried out in the light of day with input to the thread from anybody who wished to contribute, and questions answered and concerns considered.
So prax, maybe you came on a little strong and led with a price list. I don't think you're selling snake oil, but the "come on strong and lead with a price list" approach is very snake-oily in appearance. A bit of miscommunication to be sure, but I believe that if your WTA product is good, it will speak for itself. Good luck.
