A full guide to vapes: Post 1. describing how vapes work, the aerosol they generate, their properties, their optimal regime of operation, overheating conditions and dry puffs, as well as comparisons w

16 February 2025

Link

https://robertosussman.substack.com/p/a-full-guide-to-vapes-post-1

Link to the YouTube video

https://youtu.be/R5_0WSANxL0?si=oXftf_EDxmYnpJ3Y

The harms from smoking do not arise from nicotine, but from its harmful delivery vehicle: tobacco smoke (Michael Russell). Vaping replaces this harmful vehicle by what we colloquially call “vapor” (hence we “vape”), though we know it is not really vapor, but an “aerosol” to be contrasted with the “smoke” (another aerosol) that emerges from cigarettes.

However, the definition of “aerosol” covers many substances and phenomena, including tobacco smoke, with the differences between aerosols clearly reflected in their formation processes and in their properties.

In this post I explain vape aerosols as one of the type of “liquid phase” aerosols, formed from two phase changes (evaporation and condensation) as a liquid is heated under normal boiling. Vape aerosols are analogous to the familiar aerosol that forms in the kettle snout as we boil water for tea.

However, e-liquids are chemically more complex than water, so together with these phase changes the heating process forming vape aerosols involves low energy reactions that generate byproducts that (under normal conditions) appear in minute quantities.