Single-use e-cigarettes contain batteries that last hundreds of cycles despite being discarded
3 years ago by Lee Duna to c/technology
I was in Italy recently, and I could ONLY buy single use. I fucking hated it as it died in two days making me throw out an otherwise fine device - just because there's no charging port.
Now I have one lasting for almost half a year, and that's only the taste that dissappears - not the battery becoming bad.
People are lazy and don't want to maintain a vape, which does require some basic maintenance/cleaning.
Never heard about it. My GF vapes and the vape is simply a battery with a charger. The liquid container is exchangeable. You refill it and when it runs out you change it. There's no maintenance. And even if it were true what do I care? We're supposed to contaminate the environment with batteries because some people are inconvenienced by their addiction? As I said, this product is not needed and should be banned.
When I was vaping I had to replace the coils every few weeks and cleaned out the mouthpiece, liquid container and stuff in an ultrasound. Also, I mixed flavor liquid with the nicotine liquid and had to watch out for the right mixing ratios. I'd say that's all a bit involved and a bit much for those that just want a hit of nicotine.
Sure but that's not how it works now. I doesn't really matter how it worked in the past since the single use vapes are sold today.
https://www.vapvapor.es/aspire-avp-pro-recambio - you only have to change this part, that's all the maintainence. Also, smoker's convince is not a reason to throw batteries in the trash.
Vape is very little maintenance. They even came out with disposable atomizer tanks. So I paid like $50~ or so for the battery which you charge with those big batteries they make ebikes & tesla batteries out of.
The tank works for a few weeks and then you buy another one. Much easier than going to store to buy ecigs all the time
Disposable e-cigarettes were a direct and immediate response to pod based vapes getting banned. Use to be, you would buy a device and just buy juice pods that were disposable. It still wasn't great for waste, but that policy was a clear step in the wrong direction.
They saved children from using Juuls, just to fill the landfills with lithium batteries.
There's absolutely no need for this product. Normal vape is like $20
A single use disposable is like $4 - $10, depending on how many puffs, and some people just want something they can puff on for the weekend and then quit, not something they can use/reuse long term.
Sure it's not healthy, and it's environmentally irresponsible with current single use disposables, but there's definitely a market of "casual smokers" that don't want to commit to a non-disposable vape.
Really? People smoke for one weekend and then quit? Never ever heard about this. Sure, there are people that smoke sporadically, for example only while partying or something but this is such a minority I doubt anyone would target a product specifically at them. Besides, you can just buy normal vape and buy refills only for one weekend and then 'quit'. $20 non-disposable vape is no commitment, that's my point. And people who can't afford to spend $20 on a vape probably shouldn't be spending their money on smoking anyway. There's tons of policies to discourage people from smoking, banning cheap, single use vapes should be one of them.
There certainly are casual smokers, who might buy a pack of cigarettes on Friday and be done with it by Sunday (usually after giving out several along the way) to repeat the next week.
These people don’t see themselves as addicts, and they for all intents and purposes aren’t, otherwise they’d be jonesing all week and buying a pack on Monday.
Making the leap from “having a finite amount of smoke” to “owning reusable paraphernalia” is a big jump for a casual smoker. And more than likely would enable them to justify smoking during the week.
It’s the same thing as the guy who buys an eight of weed, brings it to the party, smokes a flew blunts, and then doesn’t smoke the whole week. This guy has no need for a glass bong in his house, and he wouldn’t be able to justify its purpose, but its existence would likely mold his occasional use into something more frequent.
What you're describing is such a tiny minority of smokers I really don't see why we need specific product aimed at them. If they don't want to own a vape they can just keep smoking cigarettes. It would be better for everyone if they just stopped smoking. Contaminating environment with disposable batteries for their convenience is just insane.
of course they are. it's why I always encourage people not to buy them. they're awful for the environment, they're wasteful and they are lower quality than you'd get with most standard rechargeable e-cigarette kits.
I don't vape, but I can't imagine they're cheaper than re-usable vaping devices in the long run either.
oh my goodness yes. I couldn't imagine buying a disposable every time I ran out.
that would possibly be just as expensive as smoking regular cigarettes.
I just use a little pod system that has replaceable coil heads. it was maybe 60 total because I bought two batteries. but I've not needed a replacement battery for my personal vape yet. Just have been replacing (or reusing) my coil heads.
No, I mean long-term as in costs. Over a year or two, won't you be saving money?
$9 for the device - Vuse is the brand
Approx $7 per "cartridge"
$14 (on average) for a "Breeze Pro" disposable vape.
So it's cheaper, but about the same as regular cigarettes. Even worse, quality control on the cartridges is shoddy at best and I wind up moving the coil from a decent cartridge to one that failed less than 1/4 way through. At this point it's rare to have a coil last as long as it should.
Best way to save money is to quit. Dropped alcohol last year and THC before Thanksgiving.
Nicotine is next on the list, here's hoping for a cheaper new year.
Personally, I can't keep a vape in one working piece for two years. Either the battery box fries, I shatter the tank, the USB port gets destroyed, or something else goes wrong. I'm very clumsy.
I have a box of backup parts and pieces at home because of this.
If you really want long term savings... how about ditch your nicotine habit? That's what - $1,500 per year? $100,000 over your lifetime?
Oh, and medical bills on top of that. Hard to estimate that, but it could be more.
I can think of something better to spend $100,000 on. Slot machines at a Casino would be a better option for example.
The pod style devices are cheaper than the older style cloud chuckers and most of those now are refillable and not the juul style ones. I'm seeing good ones for $30-$50. The non removable battery gives them less longevity although they're still significantly more environmentally friendly than disposables. I used a fog machine to quit smoking and I've kept using them, but I definitely get why new vapers are largely going with the USB sticks now.
Not really anymore for the ones with built-in batteries like the disposables. Similar to disposibles they are typical 20W or less. You can get many of them for under $30, including the UWELL Caliburn line which is a quality product line. The G Coil packs are between $10 and $20 depending and last a week or more per coil of which there are 5. If you chain them, you're probably looking at between 2 and 3 days per coil.
The mods that require rechargeables like 18650 and other similar form factors sit between $50 and $70 for reputable brands, though for the ~200W mods it can be around $100 if you include their branded tanks.
I'd bet your mod is at least a 100W+, probably over 150W depending on when you bought them (they are cheaper now than a few years, which were cheaper than a 10 years before that).
The tanks are pretty cheap now too, even those multi-coil rebuildables. If you don't rebuild your tank and use pre-built coils it is going to be a little more expensive. Those tanks for pre-builts tend to be a bit cheaper as well, like ~$30 for non-pods. Pod tanks tend to be around $10 - $15.
I remember 80W mods going for between $100 and $300 back in 2011 depending if it was considered a "clone" or not.
I went from a caliburn to a geekvape aegis and the coils are cheaper and they last me WEEKS instead of days now! So now I’m a shill for that. Also it’s like 35USD.
Quick edit: my SMPL clone was like 25USD and last like five years before I got lazy and stopped wanting to deal with building coils hahaha. It still works great!
Lawl my geekvape aegis was like 35USD and five coils are under 15USD. The coils last 2-3 weeks or more. The battery lasts FOREVER before needing a recharge.
I make my own juice so that’s free.
It was even cheaper using a SMPL mech mod and wrapping my own coils, but I got lazy. Now my 16+ 18650s go to my hobbyist flashlights.
I don’t know what your setup is, but you prolly overpaid
They are not. In many cases they’re the same price or slightly less. If you want a long term refillable, rechargeable vape that comes with spare coils, and is a similar profile to a small disposable, it’s about $40. A similar disposable is about $35.
A few of us electronics hobbyists have been collecting them (when found discarded on the street) to harvest the battery for re-use in other projects.
.
Yes they're nasty, but I pick them up with a dog poo bag and clean them before cracking them open to get the battery.
Turn them into a power bank, among other things.
futuristic caltrops
I am dying... 🤣
Also they all have to be 0.1 v from each other otherwise the "whole thing goes south" sounds scary and is now kind of making me rethink my plan of putting up collection boxes outside of high schools and building a battery for my house out of them.
Once it's balanced and wired it's impossible to be imbalanced again though. The risk is only during initial assembly and you accidentally includes an empty cells among fully charged cells.
building a battery for my house
Uh yeah that's totally different league than building a power bank though.
I guess that's the silver lining, free batteries for anyone willing to deal with a dirty object.
They're also a prime starting supply for lithium battery recycling plants so they can get things figured out before they have to deal with car packs at volume.
At the moment I have several strings of LED Christmas lights on various houseplants that are powered by salvaged batteries.
Also a dollar store magnetic "spotlight" that I modified and have mounted to the chest freezer in the basement so I can see what's in there.
You can also use them as mini fog machines if you hook up a small pump. I build dioramas and have been experimenting with them.
For anyone wanting to learn more there's a bigclive video covering the extraction process.
That reminds me of this monstrosity https://www.walmart.com/...
You have to buy new "activators" every 30 uses as a way of increasing profits... You know rather than just letting users replace the batteries.
I can imagine them fucking off.
I can imagine all of you naked.
Reminded me of this: https://www.trojanbrands.com/... And Louis Rossmann's repair video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv88A4vI960
I bought one of those once and when I realized what it was (something disposable that really shouldn’t be) I was quite upset.
It’s 2023 for gods sake we should be able to buy rechargeable teledildonic cock rings at every corner store by now ffs. Alexa, suck my dick.
I used to have a radio that would use the leftover battery from a Polaroid 600 cassette.
Iirc that was some sort of a lipo and it handled the flash and motors, but had more than enough power after the paltry 10 pictures were taken to power an AM/FM radio.
60 dollars for 10 dollars worth of electronics with no moving components... of course they wouldn't let you just keep using it for years
Oh wow it's as of e-cigs is just like cigarettes, but besides cancer and toxic chemicals, they also found a way to add more waste.
I gave up arguing with people like you a long time ago, but I still want you to know actively telling people they're just as bad as cigarettes will keep people on cigarettes, which are 4000x worse than vaping. Your misguided views are extremely harmful.
Nicotine alone is carcinogenic, despite what people like to believe.
[Citation needed]. Both of you.
There's been a study which found carcinogenic compounds in vapour... thing is they overdrove the thing so hard that it was burning the wick, noone would actually take a puff of that. It's the equivalent of setting a toaster to maximum and then saying that bread causes cancer.
There's little evidence of pure nicotine being carcinogenic afaik. Nicotine in tobacco is carcinogenic due to certain reactions with other chemicals in the tobacco plant
I mean, it is, but smoke and, weirdly, polonium are also very large contributors to cancer from tobacco use.
I used to have roommates who vaped from that exact type of single-use device shown in the thumbnail diagram. They asked me to re-charge it, which I did, disassemble it, connect it to my Li-ion charger and it worked again. Apparently it didn't taste good because it was nearly out of juice, but that was when I found out these were perfectly reusable 3.7V batteries in a disposable product.
[DELETED]
These are rechargeable lithium ion batteries. The same standard 18650 that has powered laptops, EVs, and power banks.
They're packaged inside a single use product, but the battery is rechargeable.
Yeah, some extra electronics to handle charging would go a long way.
Buuut, Quality charging controllers cost money the vapes company isn't going to put in, and overly cheap controllers add a bigger fire hazard.
You'd need quite a number of alkaline batteries to get the necessary watts to drive a vape. Lithium cells aren't just rechargable they are also good at releasing lots of energy in a short amount of time.
There is a difference. Not sure how they ar made, but the chemical composition and possibly the design is different.
Trying to recharge a non rechargeable battery can risky and there is the possibility of leaking or explosion.
In general yes, but that doesn't apply here. Vapes all use rechargeable lithium batteries, even the disposables without a charging port. Other battery chemistries at that size don't put out enough power.
Meanwhile, I’m forced to use shitty paper straws because plastic straws are banned. And yet THIS SHIT is somehow legal??
Myself I buy these disposables from time to time, but always return to small electronics recycle boxes. It's still electronic after all, with a fucking lithium battery in it.
If you ask me - these should be banned. Only refillables should be allowed to exist.
Yall want to ban the whole world and Loicense up everything out there is fascism land huh?
Wait till tis Yorupean finds out earth rocks and salt water is bad for you
Loicense for salt too dangerous
/sforgot the s
Oh no, don’t get me wrong - I’m very much against banning things in general. You should be able to buy plastic straws, disposable vapes, cocaine and a machine gun at your local 7-11.
I’m just surprised that this isn’t something that they haven’t banned yet, despite being a pretty big issue.
What if they just put a deposit on them like we do with cans to promote recycling.
I'm not in favor of banning things, but depending how it is structured I could support structured discouraging.
Deposit systems can only do so much. We have a new plastic bottle deposit system here in the Netherlands, with about a 70 percent return rate. And you can return bottles at every supermarket.
I don’t think that would work with disposablevapes. Not unless you have really high deposits and strict sales policies. A lot of this stuff also gets imported from China, so that makes it quite impossible to collect deposits on them.
Part of why the single use vapes are popular seems to me to be due to kids using them, they can toss it out so they won't get in trouble for having it, or if they do get it taken away it's just the one disposable instead of a reusable device. They also smell and taste like candy.
I keep telling you all smokers are jokers
There are plenty of people out there using equipment with replaceable and rechargable batteries and owned tanks that they refill with their own liquid
Pretty much the least wasteful version of smoking as far as I can tell
On rebuildable vapes, where everything but the electronics are user replaceable, the electronics are the weak point. There also are seals that need replacing and some poor quality atomizers(the vape production part) need replacement from wear. Legitimate batteries(not recycled and relabeled or off-brand) can last for 200-500 charge-discharge cycles.
There are "mechanical" devices that have no electronics, but they are more risky because they create a hard short of the battery and a lack of appropriate caution can lead to catastrophic failure which may result in physical harm or property damage.
The problem is the hassle of making coils and repacking wicks. They do have replaceable wick+coil units that aren't really rebuildable, but it does cut down on waste compared to disposable units.
See I'm struggling with this transitioning from smoking handrolled pipe tobacco filterless cigarettes to reusable box mod Vape.
One is cost, my past method I spent less than $700 a year on tobacco and paper. Now I spent $200 on a box mod and its been like $60 a month for liquid now, then lets say another $12 for coils. My costs have way more than doubled but I spent years finding a way to trim that down before.
Secondly the waste. I had no filter so the last few puffs of paper and tobacco were biodegradable. Now I have at least 3 plastic bottles a month and their lids all piling up in the recycle. Then the metal coils, housings, and cotton just get tossed every month. The tank I had leaked so I wasted a lot of juice and had to buy extra, I replaced the tank for $30, that one leaked too and I couldnt return it, so I bought a better one overpriced at $40. That coil burned while on vacation, so I begrudgingly bought a disposable one for the first time and I'm finding I can pop it open and creatively refill it, so Ill be doing that until I get home and can replace the coil. Vape shops don't take your used coils or bottles back in my area. I doubt they even get properly recycled because I cant rinse em effectively.
I miss the simplicity of smoking right now but honestly the hassle and waste just makes me look forward to when I can quit for good and put all of it behind me.
Well yeah. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a single-cycle battery for a low-power application.
They're not really particularly low power.
Quick search suggests around 8W power consumption with a 2 ohm heater, which at the approximately 4V of a charged Lithium-Ion battery (V=IR, P=VI) checks out to around a 2A draw.
Similar results suggest the batteries inside are in the neighbourhood of 0.75Ah (3.7V nominal) = 2.8Wh. I don't know how much of that capacity actually gets used during the "lifespan" of the vape, but I'd guess half would be a good estimate. In any case, probably safe to assume you need to pack around 2Wh in at minimum.
A Lithium AA battery (Li-FeS2 chemistry) gives you 3.4Ah @ 1.5V = 5.1Wh, but has a maximum discharge current of 2.5A (only 3.8W). The AAA is only 1.2Ah with 1.5A discharge, but two of them would give you 3.6Wh and 4.5W, closer to the target but still under.
You could probably arrange this in some sort of configuration whereby the batteries charge a capacitor and that runs the heater, at those kind of numbers it'd need to be at most a 2 seconds off for 1 second on deal, but that honestly seems like it should be fine for, y'know, vaping. Might just need to have an on/off switch to avoid draining the batteries when you're not using it.
But I guess we're at the point where manufacturing Li-Po cells happens in such vast quantities that the extra electronics to charge a capacitor from a 1.5V battery probably cost more.
Not that it really matters for the topic of disposables, but enthusiasts would often run two cells in series with sub-ohm coils. Or two cells in parallel to be able to handle the draw of going down to 0.1. Give that to ELI.
There are lithium primary cells that are perfect for low power uses when you need something to last years in between battery changes. They can't supply high current, which is why rechargeable batteries are used in disposable vapes even though it's very wasteful.
They should either ban disposable vapes outright or put a large enough deposit on them that most people will return them for recycling.
oh good, there are single-use e-cigs? what will they think up next? single-use, disposable, electronic pregnancy tests?
thank politicians like Biden, Trump, and Obama for helping to write in laws against health synthetic nicotine not being grown in soil has no pollutants added like lead think artificial vanilla here same thing
better products could have been on the market years ago like better battery usage through education and innovation but instead good scientific research got pushed into the closet with climate science and the like so people like our current politicians could keep their big tobacco bonus checks
and not all companies involved have been up to no good some have tried to do better products and research before getting shut down by policies Obama started and Trump carried on and then Biden now carrying the torch
this was definitely a planned shit storm for profit but hey lets blame the public the government screwed over for this whole mess
not to mention your local vape shop selling products that do not include safety information or where it was manufactured or anything no public service announcements on the wall or talked about nothing just selling untested products with no regard to safety or health
this is way beyond the battery problem the US has really screwed the pooch on this one major health and environmental problem and not entirely because people consume a particular substance just like coffee's push for sustainability and psa and single source and what have you
yeah, the same problem exists in the cannabis industry too. the single use vape carts are everywhere and they get chunked into the bins with no regard for recycling or the contamination theyre poor choice will cause. i use vape carts, but i have a rechargeable battery so i only have to worry about the carts themselves.
i used to vape nicotine too, and i would mix my own juices and used rebuildable coil mods too. i knew exactly what was in them, including the precise level of nicotine, so i used it to cessate from 12mg to 1mg and havent had nicotine in years now. its crazy how far away from that the industry has gone, its all disposable carts made by cigarette companies with crazy high concentrations of nicotine now. absolutely disgusting
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This shit really grinds my gears. There's absolutely no need for this product. Normal vape is like $20, you're not saving on anything. In EU the manufacturers are obligated to recover used units (they have to setup boxes where you can drop them and handle recycling) but obviously you see them on the ground all the time. This should be banned with the speed of light but EC thinks the current regulations are enough. Fucking infuriating.
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