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TSRC, Tob. Sci. Res. Conf., 2014, 68, abstr. 66

Real-time puff-by-puff analysis of electronic cigarette aerosol using GC-MS

HUANG C.B.; MERUVA N.
Altria Client Services, Richmond, Virginia, USA

With the increasing popularity of e-cigarettes (electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) or e-vapor devices) in the global marketplace, there has been an increasing interest in characterizing the aerosol produced by these devices. E-cigarette formulations and aerosols typically contain propylene glycol and/or glycerin, water, nicotine, and flavors. The objective of this research was to develop an automated puff-by-puff gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) system for real-time analysis of e-cigarette aerosols to better understand how these devices perform during use. The system is equipped with a single port smoking machine, a 6-port automated sampling and switching valve integrated with an Agilent 5973 GC-MS. The system is capable of monitoring nicotine and selected flavors (e.g. menthol) in multiple puffs of an e-cigarette. A portion of the e-cigarette aerosol from each single puff was directly injected onto the GC column for real-time puff-by-puff analysis. This technique used one e-cigarette per measurement and required no sample preparation of the aerosol prior to GC-MS analysis. This novel method provided qualitative data and percent change in the analyte concentration relative to a control product. The puff-by-puff data from analysis of commercial e-cigarettes containing different amounts of nicotine in the formulation showed that nicotine delivery decreases with number of puffs.