PG/VG and Nic (posts split from VM Thread)

Just to clarify, if we go by pure science 100% pure Nicotine in impossible, most consider 99.9% pure. True VG cannot be 100% pure because of the way it is refined. Anything 99% and above is considered pharmaceutical grade in most countries. Synthetic glycerin however can approach 100% with 99.999% pure. Given these numbers alone it is true that there is no such thing as 100% pure VG e-liquid. Even if you were using 99.9% pure nicotine, 99.9% pure VG (extremely unlikely), and 99.9% pure VG based flavoring (unknown if even possible), the final product is continuing to degrade with each ingredient. Only analysis by mass spectrometer could give you the true purity. If things get this technical and precise, maybe we are just looking too hard. I will concede that under even optimal conditions and making an assumption that 99.9% pure VG flavoring is possible, the best you could do would be approx. 99.7% pure VG. This does not mean that the other .3% is PG however, it could be any combination of "contaminates". PG is not a requirement for flavoring or Nicotine, it was just the most cost effective way to deliver the final product. Nicotine alone contains no PG or VG, it bonds with the agent we add it to on a molecular level, flavoring does not have to use PG, it just traditionally has, again for ease and cost effectiveness. So for complete truthfulness in labeling, can I label as 100% pure VG e-liquid, technically no. Can I label as 100% PG free, absolutely. (with a complete mass spectrometer analysis of course.)

 

What I was getting at is the highest Pure VG mix lets say a 10mg nic eliquid, would be around 98%VG, thats allowing for 1%nic, 0.4% inpurity in the VG and 0.6% of the flavor.

 

Some Companies say Max VG and others say 100% VG Based or 100%VG for short. These can all mean the same thing. The one I question however is the one that says Max VG. The mixer can simply use PG or alcohol based flavors in a Max VG mix stating he could not buy the same flavor with a VG base. It opens too many opportunities for the maker to get lazy.

**Updated**

I also agree 100% with this. the Mg count had better reflect the end product rather than the base as Flavoring amounts can vary sometimes from 5%-30% of the entire mixture.

 

I'm sorry but I am a little confused about your math. Nicotine or flavoring alone does not inherently have an effect on VG content. If the nicotine is bonded with VG, the percentage of VG does not change just because of the nicotine content itself. It doesn't matter if its 1% nicotine or 99% nicotine, if it is bonded with VG the VG percentage stays the same. If I buy a bottle of 12% (120 mg) nicotine bonded with 100% VG it does not mean that I only have 88% VG. The same can apply to flavoring, if the flavor is bonded to 100% VG, it doesn't matter how much or how little of the flavoring I use, it is still 100% VG (minus contaminates). Nicotine and flavoring require a carrier, and once bonded to this carrier, become part of it. It is the final bonded product that we are interested in.

 

There is another side to it, lets say you know a eliquid manufacturer produces a flavored liquid, that is 85%VG and 15% flavor if he markets as 85% VG he could be giving away the contents. As there are not too many flavor manufactures it can be simple to work out. But I do agree, High VG can only be seen as up to 20% of PG based flavor.

**Updated**

To get an answer to this a manufacture would need to step in and explain the process, Im not a chemist but im sure extracting flavors will affect the %. The ones I have read about, tobacco and menthol can affect it considerably. Also you can buy pure nic, it states its 100% nicotine, not VG or PG and to add this to eliquid to get 10mg you add 1%. Not that I would recommend anyone use pure nic, its highly toxic and very dangerous. I would also recommend that anyone mixing or buying nic, test the nic content too. I test every batch that I buy and my tests always show them around 6-10% out, this could be test errors but I air on the safe side.

 

I'm with you on some of this but follow along here. "Pure" nicotine is not PG or VG. It bonds on a molecular level with the carrier it is added to. By your example above to get 10 mg/mL you add 1% of nicotine to your preferred carrier. It does not mean that you have reduced the percentage of the carrier. Once they bond you have 100% of the carrier. The only difference is that it now contains nicotine. You do not have 99% carrier and 1% nicotine. It does not work that way. You now have 100% percent of your chosen carrier that contains 10 mg/mL of nicotine. The same is basically true for flavoring, but a little more complicated. In simple terms, you don't change the percentage of the flavor carrier, only the concentration of the flavor in that carrier. Also could you elaborate more on your nicotine test method? I am curious as to which method you are using. The difference between 6% and 10% or the test showing the concentrations to be 6-10% off is a large margin of error and according the strengths and quantities could be a very bad thing.

 

You say it bonds on a molecular level with a carrier, why can you buy pure 100% nic then, not that it matters, I buy 10% nic in vg only, when tested with 12N sulfuric acid it usually measures a little high at 10.6% so I take this as 106mg in all my calculations instead of 100, therefore if theres any error its reducing the nic level and not increasing it.

 

First of all there is no such thing as 100% pure nicotine. 99.9% is the closest for now. But for ease let's use pure or 100%. Pure nicotine is just that 99.9% nicotine and .1% contaminates. Nothing to do with PG or VG. Doesn't need a carrier at this point. As you know pure nicotine is useless in that form. 1 ml absorbed through skin contact alone is fatal. To get pure nicotine into a usable solution it needs a carrier. Doesn't have to be PG or VG, most anything will function as a carrier. Now this is where things get a little more interesting. Not every carrier bonds on a molecular level. Some carriers only mix and there is little to no molecular bonding. When this happens the concentration of nicotine will not be consistent. Meaning some parts of the solution will contain higher parts of nicotine than the others. This will not work for us as we need a consistent concentration. With no molecular bonding, you still technically have 2 separate solutions. With this situation your math will work. However, once two components bond on a molecular level, the match changes completely. It is no accident that PG and VG are used for making e-liquids. The chemistry and math for this was figured out many years ago, it was just not used on a large scale until recently. PG at the time was considered the best carrier for a nicotine solution. The availability, price and bonding properties made it the standard of the day. 1960's for those wondering. Fast forward to today, VG will work essentially chemically the same as PG for a nicotine carrier. I'm sure there are many others that will work the same, but we are not concerned about those at the moment. To avoid boring those that are not interested feel free to research basic chemistry, specifically mixing and bonding at your own leisure.

Bromothymol Blue and .12N Sulfuric Acid are good agents for home testing. I don't know your sample size but the accuracy should be +/- 4 mg/mL at worst and +/- 1 mg/mL at best. (Assuming the tests are performed correctly and the chemicals and workstation are not contaminated.) So 100 mg/mL testing at 106 mg/mL falls outside of the acceptable test accuracy, assuming the sample is truly 100 mg/mL. Maybe it is actually 102 mg/mL or 110 mg/mL or somewhere in between. (Again, assuming the tests are performed correctly and the chemicals and workstation are not contaminated.)

Everyone has their own opinions about how accurate any of this is and exactly what they think it means in the end. I am just providing the information. You can research this as deeply as you wish or not. I don't want to turn into Pbusardo, so I will exit stage right.

 

Of course my maths works for this, I have bought 99.9% in the past, but prefer 10%. Like I said, I take what the manufacture tells me and then I test. They supply 10% which is 90% VG and 10%nic. I dont need to worry further. Molecular bonding or not its still the same to me. When I bought 250ml 99.9% and added 250ml VG it was 500ml of 50% and not 250ml of molecular bonded. The same when they add 100ml of 99.9% to 900 ml of VG they get the 10%

If there is anything wrong in these calculations then for the all the vaping community it should be highlighted, the information supplied is the same as printed on hiliq bottles. And all the mixinc caculators take into account all % nic values from 0-100.

 

I said I was done with this and I really should be. 250 ml of 99.9% nicotine plus 250 ml of VG is 500 ml of approximately 500 mg/mL of VG based nicotine. I don't know where you get 250 ml of molecular bonded anything from that math.

 

OK so maybe I misunderstood the molecular bonding issue, but my personal believe is if I put 1% of nic in a liquid and x% of flavor excluding pg or vg carrier, I wouldn't label as 100%VG My 80% liquid has 80% VG and 20 % of the other additives, Flavor,Pg and Nic.

 

At this point the only thing we seem to disagree about is what is making up the remaining percentages after a known amount of VG. PG, we know will drop your VG percentage down, no argument there. The point that I have been trying to make is that nicotine and flavoring within themselves are neither VG or PG based. You make that distinction when the nicotine or flavoring is bonded to the PG or VG. I don't know how to explain the concept if you don't understand it. The closest I can think of is carbonated water. Once the water is carbonated you have a bonded solution. The amount of carbonation does not change the percentage of water, it changes the solution as a whole. This is not the best example but maybe it is a step in understanding the basics of some of the processes involved.

 

Thanks V and sorry for hijacking the thread, you know how it gets when theres and interesting side topic, or in hind sight, debating the makeup of a few % of our eliquids is probably not that interesting lol.