Why are next-gen vapes so effective?

[tasticleeze]

How does the hybrid approach that has everyone so jazzed , work?

Tornado has a second condenser and some ballvapes preheat the bowl for a hybrid effect apparently.

Could anyone please shed light on how this produces more thorough extraction and effects of the experience?

Any input appreciated, my first post and I realize I don’t contribute a lot to this really cool community.

Thank you!

 

[Andreaerdna]

IMO preheating the bowl helps in terms of even extraction through the whole load

Convection tends to heat the center of the bowl more than the walls, while radiation (or if you want to call it conduction, but it is not) heat the load starting from the exterior of the bowl/load, so they are complementary

Also it is possible that heating the load before hitting the vape push decarboxylation further than convection only heating (hence a more narcotic/stoner effect)

 

[Shit Snacks]

How does the hybrid approach that has everyone so jazzed , work?

Hybrid heating is not exactly the simple thing, it's kind of marketing at this point

Tornado has a second condenser and some ballvapes preheat the bowl for a hybrid effect apparently.

Preheating a bowl is not really the same as a full hybrid type extraction, and it's not really as simple as effects from convection and conduction per se... It's about other factors in the designs, like power and mass

Could anyone please shed light on how this produces more thorough extraction and effects of the experience?

Many different vapes have different signatures and different power sources, heating elements, load sizes, extraction styles, different forms of control and regulation... There is such a wide range and number of variables, that its hard to appreciate entirely until you've gotten to experience more types perhaps??

Any input appreciated, my first post and I realize I don’t contribute a lot to this really cool community.

Thank you!

Welcome to FC! There is probably a wealth of knowledge here although it's not that easy to find, so participating helps a lot! I think many of us began on a slippery slope with one then ended up with many more, learning, understanding much more over time

 

[Andreaerdna]

Hybrid heating is not exactly the simple thing, it's kind of marketing at this point

I disagree

There is a huge difference between pure convection heating devices and devices that are tuned to use a combination of convection and radiation/conduction

Think to alan instant heat and a solo: it’s not marketing, they are very different

There are vapes that you can tune to preheat the load (enano when you wait a minute before hitting vs hitting immediately after putting the log on top of the bowl)

There are vapes that are designed to use both heating ways (heating the bowl and heating the air) and I feel they give me different effects (tempest for instance) than a 100% convection

Another example is the heat island when using metal bowl or glass bowl, they are not different by marketing they are different in terms of extraction and effects, IME

 

[Shit Snacks]

I disagree

There is a huge difference between pure convection heating devices and devices that are tuned to use a combination of convection and radiation/conduction

Sorry I think you kind of misunderstand what I meant because I said it way too simply, I think what they were referring to as they were specifically referencing tornado and the way some of these things are marketed, like the way session and on demand mode are being used now too some. Does not mean these things aren't real or capable of differences I just don't think it was accurate the way it was being laid out there is all...

Another example is the heat island when using metal bowl or glass bowl, they are not different by marketing they are different in terms of extraction and effects, IME

That's kind of what my point was, all these variables make it different experience, it's not as simple as something being "hybrid" that term alone has become buzzwordy

 

[General Disaster]

First off, the Tornado is not using a secondary condenser, in fact the opposite (condensers are for cooling, the Tornado has a secondary heating effect plus a constriction) and this isn't directly related to what people call conduction/convection hybrid vaping (thanks for the accurate correction on 'conduction' @Andreaerdna!). It is supposed to produce a vapour made of finer sizer droplets, the idea being they are believed to be more bioavaialble in the lungs. It certainly seems to have an effect above and beyond most similar powerful vapes.

As I see it, all the 'conduction' part relates to is preventing too much heat loss at the walls of the bowl from the heated air being drawn through so the extraction is far more even (as mentioned already). It's simply a method to alleviate a failing of some bowls; some vapes find passive ways to minimise this, and they tend to be described as convection vapes, some rely on actively heating the bowl walls and are called conduction or hybrid (conduction/convection).

 

[TigoleBitties]

How does the hybrid approach that has everyone so jazzed , work?

Tornado has a second condenser and some ballvapes preheat the bowl for a hybrid effect apparently.

Could anyone please shed light on how this produces more thorough extraction and effects of the experience?

Any input appreciated, my first post and I realize I don’t contribute a lot to this really cool community.

Thank you!

Some have already mentioned how conduction effects heat flower more effectively due to contact with the walls of a bowl, while convection is hot air passing through the flower and can generally favor the middle of a bowl where airflow is best. Another complementary difference between convection and conduction is that conduction is generally a constant effect while convection happens only while the user draws hot air through the load.

I believe hybrid vapes make it easier to produce vapor with less user effort largely due to the conduction effects increasing the vapor pressure on the flower at all times. From the interwebs:

Vapor pressure is the pressure exerted by a substance's vapor (gas) when it's in equilibrium with its liquid (or solid) phase within a closed container. In simple terms, it's the measure of how easily a liquid or solid turns into a gas

• Effect of Temperature:
  Vapor pressure generally increases as the temperature of the liquid increases. This is because higher temperatures mean molecules have more kinetic energy, making it easier for them to escape the liquid phase and enter the gas phase.

With conduction lowering the barrier for the gas phase, the user drawing hot air over already hot flower makes it easier to generate vapor.

 

[General Disaster]

when it's in equilibrium with its liquid (or solid) phase within a closed container

Unfortunately, vapour pressure isn't going to be what's really going on here, if only because the vape isn't an enclosed container, but rather is open to the air, and the substance cannot reach an equilibrium. Vapour pressure can be thought of as how volatile a liquid is (this isn't a strict definition, rather a description) and how readily it evaporates. Like when you open the bottle of iso and detect the escape of vapour - the pressure is higher than atmospheric.
As temperature increases the vapour pressure increases - i.e. it produces (or tries to) more gas, but without containment that just escapes, little actual change of pressure.

It's simply that the bowl acts as a heat sink so some of the heat carried by convection is lost and isn't heating the flower as much where it is adjacent to the bowl walls. To try and describe it using physics is pointless because the complexity is far beyond what we can intellectualise (or most of us) - e.g. see @Andreaerdna's comment on 'conduction' (although I could argue the use of the word being reasonable, the actual process is indeed electromagnetic radiation, not atoms 'rubbing up' against each other), and while I don't have the education to be positive, I'm fairly sure convection also relies on radiation in the movement of heat from one molecule to another (what else could it be? ).

We are much much better at learning from experience (gaining intuition) than working it out scientifically, however fascinating the actual processes are to consider.

 

[TigoleBitties]

Unfortunately, vapour pressure isn't going to be what's really going on here, if only because the vape isn't an enclosed container, but rather is open to the air, and the substance cannot reach an equilibrium. Vapour pressure can be thought of as how volatile a liquid is (this isn't a strict definition, rather a description) and how readily it evaporates. Like when you open the bottle of iso and detect the escape of vapour - the pressure is higher than atmospheric.
As temperature increases the vapour pressure increases - i.e. it produces (or tries to) more gas, but without containment that just escapes, little actual change of pressure.

It's simply that the bowl acts as a heat sink so some of the heat carried by convection is lost and isn't heating the flower as much where it is adjacent to the bowl walls. To try and describe it using physics is pointless because the complexity is far beyond what we can intellectualise (or most of us) - e.g. see @Andreaerdna's comment on 'conduction' (although I could argue the use of the word being reasonable, the actual process is indeed electromagnetic radiation, not atoms 'rubbing up' against each other), and while I don't have the education to be positive, I'm fairly sure convection also relies on radiation in the movement of heat from one molecule to another (what else could it be? ).

We are much much better at learning from experience (gaining intuition) than working it out scientifically, however fascinating the actual processes are to consider.

It's true that the flower isn't in a closed container and for sure there are many complex processes going on but I think it's a large part of the process. The effect of temperature on the kinetic energy of molecules holds true regardless of whether the container is closed or not. With constant conduction (and radiation) raising the kinetic energy of the molecules in the trichomes, they can be more easily vaporized when hot air passes over them from a draw (convection).

I guess it would be analogous to a pan of warm water that is simmering on a stove. A warm pan with warm water will create more water vapor faster with added heat than a cold pan with cold water due to the stored kinetic energy already in the pan.

 

[tasticleeze]

Thank you everyone for contributing to the discussion!

As a side project idea, it’d be interesting to scrape some of the massive threads on here for info and query an llm for some cogent summarization that is understandable to laymen.

Clearly some manufacturers are on to something, I just wonder what exactly we’re talking about besides the awesome experience of trying a new vape that kicks extra ass

 

[Radwin Bodnic]

Unfortunately, vapour pressure isn't going to be what's really going on here, if only because the vape isn't an enclosed container, but rather is open to the air, and the substance cannot reach an equilibrium.

With a device like the Vaponic you can modulate the air entering the bowl with your fingers easily. (Covering the air intakes like carb holes). If you do it while drawing on the device, the added airflow restriction will create a depression inside the device, thus lowering the vapor pressure of the compounds. At a constant temperature, the lower vapor pressure probably helps a better extraction.

It's simply that the bowl acts as a heat sink so some of the heat carried by convection is lost and isn't heating the flower as much where it is adjacent to the bowl walls. To try and describe it using physics is pointless because the complexity is far beyond what we can intellectualise (or most of us) - e.g. see @Andreaerdna's comment on 'conduction' (although I could argue the use of the word being reasonable, the actual process is indeed electromagnetic radiation, not atoms 'rubbing up' against each other), and while I don't have the education to be positive, I'm fairly sure convection also relies on radiation in the movement of heat from one molecule to another (what else could it be? ).

We often refer as "conduction" effect when there's a material with a strong effusivity closely surrounding the herb. When the herb is surrounded by insulating materials (quartz, glass, zirconia, wood,...) we often talks about convection.
So that's probably just down to how aggressively the heat is transferred to the dry herb.

 

[General Disaster]

The effect of temperature on the kinetic energy of molecules holds true regardless of whether the container is closed or not.

But all that says is something gets hotter if you heat it.
By definition a closed system has a limited number of known variables, almost all complex open systems (like a vape) have too many unknown variables to calculate. The best we usually do is discovering trends such as the effects of airflow, and our brains are extremely well suited for these intuitive skills and knowledge.
To put it crudely, just suppose vapour pressure was the primary effect in how a vape behaves, what does that gain you? How can you use that to better use your vape?
I'd personally say that to all intent and purpose it's the temperature (or energy to be more precise) you put into the bowl that has the primary effect, with airflow being able to adjust the effects of that particular setting.

With a device like the Vaponic you can modulate the air entering the bowl with your fingers easily.

No argument there, but in the post I was replying to, the real effect is down to the temperature the flower is being exposed to which really controls the process. The vapour pressure has negligible impact in terms of anything you can control. In fact it's not really relevant if you're not dealing with a closed system, which can't of course exist in a vape.

What may be more relevant (imho, anyway) is the lowering of a compounds boiling point by pressure reduction, but that's not vapour pressure. There essentially is no vapour pressure in an open system because any excess pressure instantly escapes rather than the pressure building up as it would in a sealed container - until it reaches an equilibrium for the ambient temperature.
A little like ideal gases can only exist in a closed system, in an open system there are suddenly numerous incalculable factors coming into play preventing accurate predictions of behaviour. This is why the very definition of vapour pressure requires a closed system.

 

[TigoleBitties]

But all that says is something gets hotter if you heat it.
By definition a closed system...

Yes but I've already acknowledged it's not a closed system. So vapor pressure isn't the correct term. I shouldn't have used the term vapor pressure as it just confused things. My bad.

Of course things get hotter as you heat them but how effectively they get hotter is what I'm trying to describe. I was saying that in a hybrid system, conductive and radiative heat are constantly increasing kinetic energy in the flower. However this heat energy is most effective closer to the walls of the bowl, while the temp of flower on the interior lags behind.

Hot air passing all throughout the flower more effectively heats areas farther from the walls and ultimately heats all of the flower in a more rapid fashion than conduction or convection alone.

I agree with you that it boils down to getting more energy into the flower more effectively. And as you say, from experience I've seen hybrid systems create vapor more easily. I don't think the main processes are too complicated to identify.

When I select the "convection bake" setting on my oven, generally baking times are reduced due to the same effects. Hot air blowing onto the food while the oven walls constantly heat gets more heat energy into the food faster than the regular bake setting with no hot air circulating.

The overall air pressure around the flower is likely lowered when you draw too which can aid phase changes but likely isn't the most important effect on vapor production.

 

[General Disaster]

I think in part it's how you 'see' things working in your (one's) mind, that effects how you describe them. On reflection I suspect I agree with what your saying, but not how you're saying it (and that's me at fault, but I haven't much choice in the matter). The way I see this issue of even distribution of energy (heat, whatever) both from top to bottom of the bowl, but also across too (walls and centre) is that if the walls are made of a material that in the quantities used will draw away too much energy from the heated air where it touches the bowl walls leaving the flower next to the walls a bit cooler than the rest of the bowl causing a less efficient extraction.

But I don't believe using conduction to heat the bowl walls is the only solution, and the new Tempest 2 shows a remarkably even roasting of the avb while engineered to avoid conduction as much as possible. And it's extraction efficiency appears to be equally excellent. It's certainly easier to get an even roast with this thing than with a desktop ball vape where you manually heat the bowl but have to estimate (which I'm not so good at!).

But anyway, from my view and especially having recently had the good fortune to try both Tornado and Tempest 2, I think they are both engineering out the problem with very clever and sometimes quite subtle design, and just for my taste, I prefer this route to trying to compensate instead by having to actively heat up the bowl by more than just the flow of hot air. But I realise all routes have their pros and cons.

Both those vapes use very thin bowl walls so much less energy and time is needed for them to reach ambient temperature, but they both also have a very thin air gap between the inner wall of the cap and the outside of the bowl wall, which allows a little of the hot air being drawn through to heat the bowl walls from the outside where there's nothing to prevent good thermal transfer (whereas inside the bowl walls the weed slightly insulates the walls from the hot air reducing heat transfer). As the power available in the cap increases this effect works better as there's enough spare energy for heating those thin walls quickly.

 

[General Disaster]

Yes but I've already acknowledged it's not a closed system. So vapor pressure isn't the correct term. I shouldn't have used the term vapor pressure as it just confused things. My bad.
...

I may be coming across as argumentative and/or even unreasonable or patronising, but it's just the way my head works plus my science background that makes certain descriptions very sensitive in terms of my own understanding of physical and chemical processes, it's not personal, in case it appears so!
I often have to phrase things in my own terms to understand them.

 

[Radwin Bodnic]

Vapor pressure exist in an open system. When you boil water without a lid it's en open system and the boiling temp depends on the water vapor pressure. The lower the vapor pressure, the easiest it is for liquid water to evaporate.
Water vapor pressure depends on the amount of water already present in the air. If the air is saturated with water vapor then it will be harder for liquid water to evaporate.
The atmosphere pressure is a combinaison of all the vapor pressures of all its compounds. If you climb up high in altitude, the atmosphere gets thinner (less dense) so the pressure will be lower and so is the water vapor pressure (in this specific example). The boiling temp for water in altitude is lower because water vapor pressure is lower.

I think in our hobby vapor pressure will only apply to lighter compounds that can exists as a gas : terpenes and flavonoids. I'm not sure cannabinoids can exist as a gas state within pressure and temperature conditions we use while vaping. These are heavy and bulky molecules that would probably just tear apart if they tried to be a gas. I'm convinced that the heavier compounds of cannabis are not vaporized but extracted in an aerosol : liquid droplets in the hot air stream.

 

[General Disaster]

Vapor pressure exist in an open system

How can it exist when it's impossible to measure? It's the very fact it's closed that allows it to create that pressure differential between the inside of the vessel and the surroundings.

Again, you need to take account of it's definition - this is very important, if those conditions of the definition are not met, then whatever you're dealing with isn't just vapour pressure.

The atmosphere pressure is a combinaison of all the vapor pressures of all its compounds.

I disagree, the atmospheric pressure is the ambient pressure in an open system (to simplify, I'm not accounting for the huge range of pressures in the different parts of an open system but treating as an average). Vapour pressure works against the effect of reducing pressure to reduce the boiling point and melting point of a substance.

Just using the term vapour pressure in any meaningful way requires the definition be met, hence a closed system is the only system where vapour pressure can even be measured. Once you have an open system, it's effected by far more powerful attributes such as air pressure.
You can't just discard a part of the definition because it doesn't fit your ideas, if you want to consider it in a helpful and meaningful manner.

The boiling temp for water in altitude is lower because water vapor pressure is lower.

As I said before, the boiling and melting points are effected by the overall pressure. If vapour pressure really was a significant effect - think about what would happen - vapour pressure is a positive pressure relative to ambient atmospheric pressure, that increase in positive pressure will actually increase the temperature required to vapourise the terpenoids! Of course this can't happen because that effect of vapour pressure requires a closed system to be able to contain it, otherwise it's instantly dropping below the vapour pressure (for the specific temperature) because it's higher than the external pressure and will balance out by escaping the container into the atmosphere.

 

[Radwin Bodnic]

How can it exist when it's impossible to measure? It's the very fact it's closed that allows it to create that pressure differential between the inside of the vessel and the surroundings.

Again, you need to take account of it's definition - this is very important, if those conditions of the definition are not met, then whatever you're dealing with isn't just vapour pressure.

I disagree, the atmospheric pressure is the ambient pressure in an open system (to simplify, I'm not accounting for the huge range of pressures in the different parts of an open system but treating as an average). Vapour pressure works against the effect of reducing pressure to reduce the boiling point and melting point of a substance.

Just using the term vapour pressure in any meaningful way requires the definition be met, hence a closed system is the only system where vapour pressure can even be measured. Once you have an open system, it's effected by far more powerful attributes such as air pressure.
You can't just discard a part of the definition because it doesn't fit your ideas, if you want to consider it in a helpful and meaningful manner.


As I said before, the boiling and melting points are affected by the overall pressure. If vapour pressure really was a significant effect - think about what would happen - vapour pressure is a positive pressure relative to ambient atmospheric pressure, that increase in positive pressure will actually increase the temperature required to vapourise the terpenoids! Of course this can't happen because that effect of vapour pressure requires a closed system to be able to contain it, otherwise it's instantly dropping below the vapour pressure (for the specific temperature) because it's higher than the external pressure and will balance out by escaping the container into the atmosphere.

I'm more familiar with the meteorological definition of vapor pressure. Which is defined in an open system which is not at equilibrium.

Wiki :

In meteorology, the term vapor pressuremeans the partial pressure of water vapor in the atmosphere, even if it is not in equilibrium.[16] This differs from its meaning in other sciences.[16] According to the American Meteorological Society Glossary of Meteorology, saturation vapor pressureproperly refers to the equilibrium vapor pressure of water above a flat surface of liquid water or solid ice, and is a function only of temperature and whether the condensed phase is liquid or solid.[17]Relative humidity is defined relative to saturation vapor pressure.

 

[General Disaster]

I'm working on the chemical use of vapour pressure, which seems more appropriate for the circumstance (a compound in a device that heats it up to boiling point). I worked in organic chem labs for about 12 years, then pharma drug discovery labs for about a decade, and I'm going on what I know from this. To be frank, considering the different uses, and different definitions, without specifying that the term vapour pressure become less even less useful because it become ambiguous. Even the term partial pressure can be unclear without context (e.g. is sometimes used in ideal gas systems which can only operate in a closed system).

Atmospheric terms is a different game as you're dealing with an infinitely complex system at a fundamentally different scale that the very best efforts at prediction have worked hard for a long time to get it close to correct (and we all know how dodgy weather predictions are) and even then only on a large scale, not to be able to look at a small system within that enormous (planet sized) atmospheric system and say what it's attributes may be.
A very different use and I don't honestly see how it helps in anything related to vapes - I asked this before but no-one answered - how does knowing that vapour pressure is the main driver of a vape help in any way in terms of controlling/improving vape function?

If you're talking about ambient pressure effecting the boiling point, that's a different case - you actually can reduce pressure in an open vessel and measure that pressure and gain a corresponding change of B.pt. that actually could be measured and controlled - whether it would bring a benefit worth the trouble is another matter, I honestly doubt it, mainly because the vape has to be an open system and you'd have to make something complex and expensive that used electric motors to control a pump that could draw the air out at such a well controlled way it could create a steady negative pressure inside that could reduce B.pt's by a measured amount for better efficiency.