18 February 2025
This is the second Substack post of a series of posts describing how vapes work, the aerosol they generate, their properties, their optimal regime of operation, overheating conditions and dry puffs, as well as comparisons with tobacco smoke and other aerosols. Post 1 Understanding vape aerosols can be found in this link
Understanding how vape aerosols form, operate and can be tested provides the knowledge to understand their pleasurable usage, their toxicity profile and relative safety with respect to tobacco smoke and other aerosols and pollutants.
I described vape emissions in Post 1 as analogous to the aerosol emerging as we boil water in a kettle. These are liquid based aerosols whose formation involves two phase changes: evaporation and condensation. Vape aerosols also involve low energetic “thermal degradation” reactions from the heating of the e-liquid, producing byproducts found in minute quantities under “normal” operating conditions.
In this post I explain in detail how these “normal” operating conditions emerge from thermal physical processes taking place while vaping, based on the trade-off between between energy released and absorbed. These conditions define an “Optimal Regime” that can be tested in the laboratory.