E-Liquid Nicotine Testing

Project Description

Contract Laboratory needed for e-liquid testing to determine if it is tobacco derived nicotine or synthetic nicotine by one of the two methods:

One quick method is using a polarimeter. Here, the optical rotation is measured, and since our synthetic nicotine has an optical rotation of 0 degrees (+/-10), and tobacco nicotine has a very different optical rotation, of (-120) - (-145) degrees, the synthetic origin of the nicotine material is easily deciphered.

Another method is by chiral HPLC. The relative amounts of each stereoisomer can be observed directly by separation of each isomer by a chiral column. Since tobacco nicotine is mainly one isomer ("S" isomer), and our synthetic nicotine is an equal-mixture of each the "R" and "S" stereoisomers (enantiomers), the difference between synthetic and natural nicotine is stark.