What’s In a Nicotine-Free Vape?

You might not be aware of this, but nicotine-free vapes are actually some of the most popular vaping products in the world today. People use them for a variety of different reasons. In some regions, vapes with nicotine aren’t legal, so people in those regions use nicotine-free vapes to wean themselves off of tobacco products. Nicotine-free vapes are popular even where vapes with nicotine are allowed, though, because they have a number of benefits that traditional vapes lack. Some people use vapes without nicotine, for instance, as non-addictive substitutes for sweets.

So, if you’re thinking about buying some non-nicotine vapes for yourself – whether it’s to cut back on nicotine vaping or for some other reason – you’re definitely not the only one. If you’ve never vaped without nicotine, though, you might have a question: What’s actually in nicotine-free vapes?

To understand the answer to that question, you first need to understand what e-liquid is and how it’s made. If you’ve never looked into that before, you might assume that nicotine is the majority of what’s in vape juice, and there’d be nothing left to inhale if the nicotine was removed. The truth, though, is exactly the opposite. Out of the four primary ingredients of vape juice, there’s actually less nicotine than anything else. Most e-liquids contain no more than 5 percent nicotine at the absolute most, and some vape juices contain far less than that.

So, what’s in a nicotine-free vape? The answer is that a non-nicotine vape contains propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin and food-grade flavors. You’ll find those same ingredients in a standard e-liquid with nicotine. The ingredients are rebalanced in a nicotine-free vape, though, to ensure that the e-liquid will provide the same flavor and performance.

You’re a health-conscious person, and it’s reasonable that you’d want to know what you’re inhaling when you use a nicotine-free vape. Let’s discuss those ingredients and how they interact with each other.

Propylene Glycol

What Is It?

Propylene glycol is produced synthetically in laboratories, usually by combining propylene oxide with a catalyst. Its properties make it useful for a wide variety of different purposes.

• It absorbs and traps moisture.
• It prevents ingredients in a solution from separating.
• It lowers the freezing point of a solution.
• It’s a good solvent, so it works as a carrier for medications and flavors.
• It inhibits the growth of microbes.
• It creates a visible cloud when it’s boiled, and it’s used in smoke machines for that reason. The use of propylene glycol in smoke machines possibly led to its use in vaping.

What Does It Do in E-Liquid?

Propylene glycol serves two purposes in e-liquid.

• In most vape juice, propylene glycol is the primary ingredient and comprises at least half of the mix. Therefore, it’s the ingredient most responsible for creating the clouds that you see when you vape.
• It’s an excellent flavor carrier because it’s a good solvent and has almost no flavor of its own. Most of the food-grade flavors used for e-liquid actually contain propylene glycol, in fact, which makes it very easy to add those flavors to vape juice.

What Other Products Use Propylene Glycol?

Because of its unique properties, propylene glycol is used in a wide variety of both consumer and industrial products. Here are a few of the products with propylene glycol that you probably encounter in your daily life.

• Shelf-stable foods: Propylene glycol keeps these foods moist and retards microbial growth.
• Frozen slush mixes: Propylene glycol prevents a slush from freezing solid, so you can drink it.
• Deodorants and air fresheners: Propylene glycol inhibits microbial growth, so it can remove foul odors or prevent them from developing.
• Haircare products, cosmetics and medications: Propylene glycol’s ability to keep the ingredients in a solution mixed makes it useful for an enormous variety of personal care products. 

Vegetable Glycerin

What Is It?

Vegetable glycerin is a byproduct of the soapmaking process, which basically involves adding lye to fat. The lye triggers a chemical reaction, creating soap and glycerin. The world needs a lot of soap, so there’s plenty of glycerin to go around. The “vegetable” qualifier signifies that the original fat was a plant-based oil rather than tallow. Glycerin from animal sources is not used in e-liquid.

What Does It Do in E-Liquid?

Vegetable glycerin has many of the same properties as propylene glycol, but it also has two differences that allow it to contribute to e-liquid in unique ways.

• Unlike propylene glycol – which is almost flavorless – vegetable glycerin is slightly sweet. Because of that, it can enhance e-liquids with sweet flavor profiles. 
• Vegetable glycerin is also thicker than propylene glycol. The higher viscosity adds bulk to the clouds that a vaping device produces and contributes to a fuller mouth feel.

What Other Products Use Vegetable Glycerin?

Because the properties of vegetable glycerin are similar in many ways to those of propylene glycol, it can be used as a substitute for propylene glycol in almost all of the products mentioned above. In addition to those products, vegetable glycerin is also suitable for a couple of additional applications.

• Low-sugar foods: Because vegetable glycerin tastes somewhat sweet, it’s often used as a substitute for sugar in snacks for people on reduced-sugar diets.
• Moisturizers: Vegetable glycerin retains water like propylene glycol, and it feels very moist when it touches the skin because of its thickness. Vegetable glycerin is commonly added to lotions, hair conditioners and eyedrops.

Food-Grade Flavors

What Are They?

Food-grade flavors are the last ingredients that you’ll find in a nicotine-free vape, and they’re the simplest ingredients to describe because the flavors used in e-liquid are the same as those that you’ll find in any food, drink, snack or candy with “natural flavors” or “artificial flavors” on the ingredient list. 

Creating a top-quality vape flavor, though, isn’t just a matter of squirting a few drops from a bottle into a solution of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin and calling it a day. In fact, the average e-liquid contains several flavoring ingredients mixed in different proportions to create a complex flavor profile. A vape juice maker will prototype each new product extensively, using various combinations of flavors from many different makers until finally arriving at a product that matches the original vision.