Nicotine in E-liquids

The vaping and electronic cigarette industries have grown impressively in the past decade. Usage among youths has increased from around 1% in 2011 to 10.5–27.5% in 2019 (pre-teens vs. older teenagers) mainly due to the vast array of flavor options available (Truth Initiative, 2020). The mixtures used in these products are usually called «e-liquid», «e-fluid», or «e-juice». To ensure the quality of these e-liquids, testing the most important quality parameters is required. One important quality control parameter is the nicotine content available in these products.

Nicotine in tobacco is usually determined by gas chromatography or liquid chromatography. Aqueous acid base titration is a much more affordable alternative for this determination. As e-liquids do not contain other components which might interfere with the titration, the aqueous acid base titration presented in this Application Note can be applied for nicotine determination.

This method is an affordable and reliable way to determine the nicotine content in e-liquids and their nicotine starting material, ensuring the quality of these products.

Nicotine starting material for e-liquids as well as e-liquids are analyzed. No sample preparation is required.

Steep and smooth titration curves are obtained for all analyses. An example titration curve is displayed in Figure 2. The automated analysis leads to reproducible results with low RSDs as shown in Table 1.