Vaporizer (inhalation device)

A vaporizer or vaporizer (literally evaporator ) is a device for the vaporization of active substances. Unlike inhalers, the substance is vaporized directly, instead of evaporating a solution. With additional heating, the substance is ideally only heated until the desired ingredients vaporize. A combustion (oxidation) is avoided, so that no undesirable by-products.

Applications and types

Application find vaporizers in medicine, where they are used for inhalation dosage form of drugs. When anesthesia devices, a vaporizer is interposed to volatile anesthetics controlled breathing air to mix. Vaporizers are also suitable for the consumption of tobacco or of pharmaceutical drugs, particularly cannabis, but also peppermint or Salvia divinorum.

There are various models of vaporizers, which differ especially in the method of supplying the heat of vaporization:

• Evaporate without heating by mixing a stream of air with the saturated air in the vaporizer. The concentration is controlled by a distribution of the fresh gas flow into a bypass branch and a Dosierzweig. For different ambient temperatures, a temperature compensation is necessary.
• Heating the liquid to a certain temperature ( such as in the anesthetic Desflurane )
• Heating the supplied air.

With a supply of heat, the temperature of a regulator, corresponding to the vaporization temperature of the substance to be vaporized, is kept constant. Depending on the application, some models are medically tested and prescribed and are available to some extent in the medical trade. In addition, head shops Vaporizers offer for the use of cannabis.

Besides the aforementioned anesthetic machines a vaporizer is used, active ingredients and flavors to extract from plant material to inhale them. Depending on the plant at different temperatures are necessary.

Research

The interest in the medical use of a vaporizer for vaporizing cannabis is reflected in a number of studies that have been published in recent years. Responsible are studies from the USA with the study recently published by D. Abrams in 2007. Additional studies were published by the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. The studies conclude that the administration of vaporized cannabis drugs is a medically useful application form, since evaporation produces no combustion products in the best case. So also in May 2008, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology study of Lineke Zuurman, which concluded that the evaporation of the vaporizer is a useful method for the administration of THC.