Physicochemical Aspects of Aerosol Generation in Electronic Cigarettes

Abstract

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have become popular consumer products being claimed both safer than tobacco cigarettes and helpful in smoking cessation. However, answering the questions concerning the safety and the possible health outcome of inhaling EC-aerosols requires reasonable predictions of preferred sites of their deposition in the respiratory system. It becomes necessary to have extensive knowledge of their physical properties, therefore, the aim of this work was to describe factors of the greatest influence on aerosols released from e-cigarettes. Generally, the generation process and the dynamics of an EC-aerosol forming from a gaseous mixture of e-liquids constituents is expressed by the detailed interplay between nucleation, evaporation, condensation and coalescence. As it was shown, the key role plays vapor saturation ratio that depends on the thermophysical properties of the individual compounds constituting e-liquid, the vaping topography that reflects individual habits of e-cigarettes users, the power applied to the heating coil and its construction.