elderboy = moldy cigars?

[Knuck42]

As would I!!

[SRex]

I am a chemist!

Propylene glycol (PG) is a liquid that [b]does not [/b] crystalize at toom temperature.  It is used as a antifreeze and has a freezing/melting point of -59C/-74F (about the same temp as dry ice).  PG is often used as a dispersent with essential oils, so I would assume high solubility of natural oils in the PG.  Impurities, like the oils in tobacco, could crystalize out of PG as the PG evaporates, but the PG itself will not crystalize.  If PG is used as a humectant (water attractant or humidity stabilizer) and is mixed with water as a humidfying agent it [i]could[/i] promote the formation of plume/bloom.  [b]BUT[/b], Plume/bloom has been around for hundreds of years before PG was used in humidifying units in humidors.

There are too many unknowns to make a fair determination of the information about the chemical analysis talked about in earlier posts.  Email/pm the info to me and I will take a look at it.

If anyone has collected a large sample (a couple of millgrams) of plume/bloom, you can send it to me and I will have it analyzed!

[canadianbeaver]

Old Jewish joke... a favorite of my late mother's.

Two old Jewish ladies at the bagel shop looking over at another table at two ladies who they don't like. "Hah... there's Ethel, you know her son Morty is a CHEMIST I hear?, says one.

"You're kidding", says the other. "I had no idea".

"Sure,", says the first lady, "From a pile of money he can make a pile of shit".

CB

[tksamtec]

Sounds complicated... don't we already know that plume/bloom is just a function of the oils within the cigar drying out and being excreted on the surface ? What would you expect to be in within those crystals if plume is just dried out cigar/tobacco oils ?

I would be curious to see what you find...and this is probably interesting enough to start a new thread (a thread that is not in the Battlezone) dedicated to that analysis, if you ever work on it.

:bigup:

[SRex]

I'd expect to see a number of medium molecular weight hydrocarbons.  Probably along the lines of tars that are in tobacco smoke, but at a different ratio than what could be extracted from a cigar or it's smoke.  Because I have not analyzed tobacco before, I find this discussion very interesting.  I would not expect to find much or any propylene glycol, unless the cigars were humidified with it.

One thing I could analyze in the short term is the tar that comes out of cigars when they smoke too hot. I'll have to get a sample checked next time I get a cigar like that!

Seriously, if anyone has a sample of plume, I'd like them to send it to me for analysis.  I need 10 milligrams or so to do the analysis.

[tksamtec]

I had a box of Monte's that were some of the oiliest wrappered cigars I have ever seen. This was a Seleccion box from '03 that contained Monte 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s.  They all had oily wrappers and were oily inside too, so much that when you smoked them you would have tobacco oils on your lips and tobacco oil stains on your front teethfrom the oils coming out of the head--pretty nasty. I tried a couple when I got them and they were a bit harsh, so I put them aside for a few years and started smoking them again in 07.  These aged very well, and smoked great and some of them had small amounts of plume on them... not enough to collect, but visible in the proper lighting. So, starting out with a cigar that is very oily to begin with probably helps alot in developing the crystals.

These were never aged using a PG solution, just distilled water, so PG had nothing to do with the formation of crystals in these particular cigars.

[Patrick B]

[quote author=SRex link=topic=12232.msg65024#msg65024 date=1325619784]
I'd expect to see a number of medium molecular weight hydrocarbons.  Probably along the lines of tars that are in tobacco smoke, but at a different ratio than what could be extracted from a cigar or it's smoke.  Because I have not analyzed tobacco before, I find this discussion very interesting.  I would not expect to find much or any propylene glycol, unless the cigars were humidified with it.

One thing I could analyze in the short term is the tar that comes out of cigars when they smoke too hot. I'll have to get a sample checked next time I get a cigar like that!

Seriously, if anyone has a sample of plume, I'd like them to send it to me for analysis.  I need 10 milligrams or so to do the analysis.
[/quote]

I'm a lab technician and it seems to me that sampling would play a big part in the composition of the plume. Scrape off a little bit of what looks like the plume, which I would assume would be a very light substance and it is bound to have whatever else is in the humidor on top of it (which I am assuming here is considerably heavier than the plume) and bingo, results say a bunch of PG is present. No way to isolate a sample of plume if PG is used in the humidor. Your thoughts?

[SRex]

Agreed!  If PG is used, it's going to show up!