In recent years there has been a large increase in the number of e-cigarettes on the market, the majority of which are designed to resemble the appearance of a standard cigarette. These devices are claimed to deliver nicotine to the smoker without any of the pyrolysis products associated with lit cigarettes. The e-cigarettes normally operate by heating an element containing a solution containing flavours and nicotine so that some of these chemicals are released to the air stream and thus delivered to the smoker. At the beginning of a puff a flow sensor initiates the heating process to allow the temperature of the element to be raised and improve the transfer efficiency to the air stream.

Due to the nature of the operation of e-cigarettes it may be expected that the parameters of principally puff duration and to some extent puff volume would have an effect on the deliveries to a smoker. At this moment in time no standard method or smoking regime exists for the machine testing of e-cigarettes. The effect of puff duration and volume on the yields of total particulate matter, nicotine and water will be presented with data from standard cigarettes for comparison. Puff volumes in the range 35 to 55 ml and puff durations in the range 2 to 4 seconds have been studied.