Wanting To Know The Technology Behind A Vaporizer

Did you get the lanterns to work?

When you read the description which part of:

" ... on the basis of a full hot air convection heating combined with conduction. ..."

Did you not understand?
Using this for food you need a whole lot more batteries. its easier to use a portable stove.

You know?

I don't think, you have a gained long term benefits on that, other than becoming intoxicated stupid, paranoid and depressed.

Most individual who abused marijuana, has its offspring suffer hydrocephalus. I have one friend, neighbor, his 2 kids suffer the effect other than being handsome and wholesome and who's fault is that?

I mean, do you have better application other than that, say medical purposes, asthma ailment, insulin intake or something, other than illegal drugs? This is an engineering forum, not a drug store, for god sake!

Is that a cigarette in the chimp's hand in your profile pic?

Let me see if I understand. You want to vaporize food and inhale it?

I'd stick with Chinese lanterns, they're better for you.

If you want to know how a vaporizer works, Google it.

Unless you are in one of those medicinal pot permitted states, Joe Friday might not approve of your experimentation!

If you are looking to dehydrate Cannabis sativa, which it sound like you are attempting to do, you are heading the wrong way. If you are trying to extract tetrahydrocannibinol (THC) by steam distillation you might have a slim chance of having it work with extensive and costly laboratory experimentation. Why waste all that good pot on lab work when you can smoke it!

The normal less expensive vaporizers are simply two electrical elements clamped into a small plastic column that sits in a container of water. The electrical elements are connected to household voltage/current to make this work. Since water is not very conductive a small quantity of table salt, Sodium Chloride, is added to allow the electrical current to pass from one element to the other generating heat in the water. This heat then vaporizes the water in the small plastic column and steam comes out into the room. As water is used up in the element column it is replaced by the water in the container. Thus, a vaporizer is going to make the pot very wet and will ruin it. A bad thing!

A better idea would be to store your cannabis inside a glass drying sealed container with a desiccant such as Calcium Chloride in it. This will absorb the moisture from the contents. When the desiccant has reached it's maximum absorbance it will turn blue. Take it out and heat it in your oven at a mild temperature. Ain't science wonderful. When dried it is ready to use again!

Personally, if I had your problems with cannabis I would find a different corner and a different dealer who has better stuff! That way I could spend my time smoking and not playing with flasks and beakers.

Good Luck, Old Salt

"...The electrical elements are connected to household voltage/current to make this work. Since water is not very conductive a small quantity of table salt, Sodium Chloride, is added to allow the electrical current to pass from one element to the other generating heat in the water. This heat then vaporizes the water in the small plastic column and steam comes out into the room. ...."

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Almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster unleavened, let's hope not.

What you describe might make a little water vapor, but electorlysis would be the most noticeable function.

Unfortunately, it isn't even just the friendly merely combustable h2 and o2 being produced. Since sodium chloride addition was specified to increase conductivity, a lot of cl2 and h2 can be expected.

Cl2 isn't going to help anyones respiration.

truth is not a compromise-

Direct current, DC, the kind where the polarity stays the same, when placed through a pair of inert electrodes immersed in water with a small amount of Sodium Chloride, NaCl, table salt, an electrolysis reaction occurs. The positive element, the anode, will attract negative charged ions, anions. The negative charged element, the cathode, will attract positive charged ions, cations. This breaks down the water to its elements, positive charged hydrogen and negative charged Oxygen. These gases can be collected above the corresponding electrodes. If desired these gases can be cleaned and sold in cylinders or in bulk.

(Remember the high school experiment where the teacher used the "H" shaped glass apparatus filled with water, a pinch of salt and wires connected to it? They would collect the gasses in a beaker held upside down and place a match at the open now bottom of the beaker. The loud "pop", that scared some students, was the reforming of the Hydrogen and Oxygen back to water.)

If an alternating current, AC, source is connected to the electrodes, the changing direction of the current will prevent the water from forming Hydrogen and Oxygen. Any gasses formed during the half cycle of the 60 hz current (in the USA) will do the opposite during the second half of the cycle. Heat is also a byproduct of this reaction. In a vaporizer this heat is then used in a open topped cylinder shaped compartment to boil the water and make steam. This steam, under the slight pressure of the heating, is them directed to wherever it is wanted.

SIDE NOTE- In the past this electrolysis method was used to make commercial chlorine gas, which there is a big market for, and commercial Hydrogen gas, not so big a commercial market for it. The manufacturing plants were located next to sea water (salt water), power plants (preferably DC or rectified AC), railroads and highways. The same process described above was used to manufacture these gasses with carbon electrodes. One such plant, owned by LCP (Linden Chlorine and Plastics), used to be located in Linden, NJ. This was across the Kill Van Kull from Staten Island, NY, a plentiful source of sea water, and adjacent to a power plant. It also had several means of transportation adjacent to their location used for shipping. A little economic geographical engineering there for all.

Thus, DC- Chlorine and Oxygen AC- heat and steam (and maybe also a humming sound). Vaporizers use house current which is AC.

http://aquarius.nasa.gov/pdfs/electrolysis.pdf

Good Luck, Old Salt

Wrong. Absolutely not true.

AC current work very well for electrolysis, you just don't get separated gasses...just a mix..

.

Also,, just in case anyone is on the fence. Do not use a sodium chloride solution for electrolysis for highshool or other demonstration, AC or DC, unless you desire Chlorine as part of the product.

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This isn't something I have to think back to highschool demonstrations for reference. Notice I am also not hedging my position with statements that include things like ''might' or 'AFAIK'. No ifs ands or buts. No question about it, statement of fact.

Wrong and Absolutely true!

My oversight concerning the apparatus shaped like an "H" for high school chemistry. The electrolyte used was a very small quantity, 1-2ml, of H2SO4 mixed with the distilled water. Distilled was used to not confuse the experiment with the local mineral content. This produced Oxygen and Hydrogen gases. As you said NaCl will form chlorine gas but only if there is a high enough concentration to sustain the reaction and the emission of chlorine gas.

As for the table salt, also NaCl, being used in household vaporizers that is the way it was done and continues to be done. The concentration of the salt is so low that if any chlorine is given off it is a negligible quantity. The quantity used was a "pinch", as in a small pinch between the thumb and the index figure. This would be much smaller than the point on a pencil. I would estimate it to be a very small fraction of a gm. I don't have a metler available right now but I would compare it to the quantity of "pepper on a gnat's Xss". Yes, there could be chlorine formed but a fraction of a ml.

Almost any electrolyte will do.

I verified the use of table salt with several persons and all of them confirmed its use in vaporizers. Their ages ranged from the 50's to 92. Don't know what the newer generations use but do know that most baby boomers, war babies and depression era people used table salt. I don't argue with the 92yo since my mother-in-law is always right!

All quantities are estimates since I do not have the lab equipment readily available to do quant and qual. They has been replaced with mostly tools and boats, which are a lot more fun.

Compromise?

Good Luck, Old Salt

Using H2SO4, is very different, as would be NaOH. Neither one are really something you would 'pinch' an amount to toss in... Well maybe NaOH with gloves.

However, adding nacl, Cl will be among the most readily evolved gasses from electrolysis. Remember that whole 'to incense conductivity part? Well the Chlorine ions are already disassociated....very low hanging fruit, even in low concentrations.

I guess there is some truth to 'high enough concentration', as below minimum detectable.....well you get the picture.

I was probably a little harsh in my response to your description...it just seemed like a recipe for possible compact diy disaster. Sorry if I ruffled feathers.

The part about AC current still producing gas has some readily available example with those sets of people who think they can split water and inject it into their engines for a net gain of efficiency. They may not have the system analysis down, but some produce a lot of Brown's gas with HF.