Discover the real science behind effective vaping. In this episode, Joanna Junak talks with vaping science researcher Roberto Sussman about how power, airflow, and resistance shape vapor production, flavor, and efficiency. Learn why temperature control isn’t the key factor—and how adjusting wattage, coil resistance, and airflow settings can completely change your vaping experience.
If you’ve ever wondered how to tune your vape for better performance, this episode explains the physics behind it all—clearly and scientifically.
Transcription:
00:04 - 14:29
[Joanna Junak]
Hello and welcome. I'm Joanna Junak and in today's program, Roberto Susman will tell us about the secrets of effective vaping, settings, airflow and temperature control. Roberto, could you please explain to us how airflow impacts the efficiency of vaping? Well, airflow is is the forced convection. You generate vapor inside of here, and at the same, almost instantaneously, you are evacuating this vapor. What does it mean, evacuating? You are forcing it out. And this is the thermal process. It absorbs energy. It's called thermal convection. or it can also be called force convection, right? And this is the airflow. So the airflow has to be proportional to power. If you are supplying a lot of power, you are generating a lot of vapor, you need a lot of airflow to evacuate it without producing too much residual heat. The problem is the residual heat. Whenever this equilibrium does not hold, you pay with residual heat. Residual heat is problematic. If heat is in small amounts, it's okay, right? So airflow, essentially, has to be proportional to power. If you supply a lot of power, then you also need a lot of airflow to evacuate and condense this power, this labor, and form the aerosol. You need to move it, and this is the air flow. It is important. It is a key ingredient of the cycle. Remember, the cycle is supply energy, that energy is supplied to vaporization, and it's also supplied by the convection, right? and then some residual remains and it settles down and it goes slowly to equilibrium until the next puff. And the cycle goes on. But airflow is an important part of this cycle because of the energy that is absorbed to pull out, to evacuate and condense the aerosol. You need to absorb energy to that. And that is part of the energy that was supplied. So how do users adjust their vaping device settings to achieve the desired effect? Well, the user can adjust power and you can also adjust the airflow. the airflow is not going to be only what you inhale, but this slit, they either close it to make, to... What happens is, it's also this another parameter, it's called air resistance, right? If you look at the high power devices, the mouthpiece is very wide. And in the small power devices, the mouthpiece is very narrow. So imagine a straw, one of these straws that you use. If the straw is flat, then it's much harder to... In fact, if the straw is wide, it's very easy to... You just have to let all the air enters. And if it is narrow, you have to push. The suction, you have to involve a lot of suction. This is the air resistance. And the air resistance is also something that you adjust depending on your comfort. you are going to have a very powerful device. Devices have very wide mouthpiece, and this mouthpiece, they facilitate a very natural inhalation to the tidal volume. It is very easy to Right? You need a very intense inhalation that has to be, that has to originate deep in your lungs. And this is facilitated by the design of the devices. Now, if you have a a low power device, low power devices, they have narrow mouthpieces, right? So, and you can adjust it because it is always a trial and error process. Sometimes you find a device and you don't have to modify anything, right? But normally you try. It's the same like if you have any product, like a car, you make some modifications of the car. You put different type of tires or you might... I don't know. There's the computer. You install different software. You put some skin protector. And it's the same with waves. A lot of it, it has to be, you customize them. And whenever you customize them, you alter physical parameters. Like if I open the sleeves, then I decrease, I'm going to decrease air resistance and increase air flow, right? And this has to be proportional to the power. Because if I excel at too intense air flow with little power, I'm not going to get much aerosol, right? So I have to put more power or decrease the airflow. And a user doesn't know physics. A user, it's instinctive. But the fact that these devices, the market of these devices is increasing, in spite of all the disinformation and so on, means that users easily are able to customize them. That's not a problem. And not a problem. And also, you have a community, a network of vape owners and shop owners and so on. And this is one of the reasons why vaping has been successful. Because there is always a community that will advise you. There are forums, there are magazines. But essentially, users can customize it on their own. And each time they customize it, they alter a physical parameter. And if they customize it well, the thermal cycle will be efficient with little residual energy, and lightning will be enjoyable. It stops being enjoyable when you alter the chemistry because of overheating. And that has to do with the temperature dependence of the reactions. If you are in the optimal regime, the reactions are weak. And the taste is okay. The moment you go above, then... It's the same thing. Look, a car. I drive my car. One day I go crazy and I do 200 kilometers an hour. Well, but most of the people will not do that. Only some crazies. But when a product is demonized like vaping, then everything that goes wrong is painted as if it was representative, when it is not. And every single consumer product can be deadly. You can kill with a car. You can kill with kitchen knives. But nobody is in panic because some crazy person used a car to kill somebody. There is no panic about that. But with waving there is panic, because we have a technocracy that is annoyed by this disruptive technology. And why can temperature control be inaccurate in some devices? Because, see, what happens is that these devices use resistances. The resistance of the coil depends on the temperature. Therefore, the resistance becomes a proxy for temperature. But the liquid has a temperature also, a boiling temperature. To use these devices, you have to do a lot of trial and error because also the temperature, the resistance does not, as I was telling you, the resistance is acting as proxy for temperature because it depends on the temperature. The dependence, all this has to be modulated by an electronic controller. The electronic controller will have to decrease the power to compensate with the resistance. And some of these devices are not very accurate. We have tested them in the laboratory. If you use them with the right airflow, they are more or less accurate. And what happens is that the real temperature... Let's say there are many temperatures in vaping. The liquid, the aerosol, the mouthpiece, the walls. Let's talk about the important temperature, the coil temperature, right? So, the coil temperature has to be very close to the boiling temperature, right? So if you choose a temperature through this resistance that is very different, it would be very difficult for the electronic controller to juggle all these parameters to get the boiling temperature. These devices require They are not for everybody. If you buy a device with temperature filter, you better have a know-how on how to adjust these parameters. And you even need some technical know-how. But in a lot of cases, And there has been laboratory tests. We have done laboratory tests also. We've seen that they are not... You have to measure the coil temperature independently and compare it with the temperature that appears in the instrument dial. And they can be very different. They are not very accurate. Temperature is not the important key parameter. The important key parameter is power. Power, resistance, and airflow. These are the important part. Temperature is a product. Like if you supply a certain amount of power, you will get the temperature. See, power is very easy to control, right? Here, I control it. I put the power, right? Or with a switch, you control power, right? The amount of watts, it can be controlled. Temperature is very complicated because first, temperature, you have many temperatures. and temperature changes, even in a small space like this, there are big changes in temperature. Remember the cigarette, 950 degrees, 10 centimeters below, 40 degrees. So what's the use of talking of temperature when temperature might refer to the coil, right? It's easier to measure, but, you have other temperatures. On the other hand, power is important because it's a supply then. Stay tuned for the next part of our science series coming in a couple of weeks.