Convection Vs Conduction
When shopping for vaporizers we are often confronted with a product that is described as a “Convection” model. Sometimes it’s possible to carefully read the specs and still have questions when it comes to the type of heat they are using; What is the alternative? Why would I choose one type of personal vape over another? What is the actual difference between convection and conduction? Hopefully we can address all those questions right here.
Before we dive into what your options are, let’s make sure we understand that there are several ways to approach heating something, and that there are practical differences in how that heat affects our herbal products.
First, there is radiant heat. Basically, the source of the heat comes into direct contact with the material to be heated. If you want to think about it terms of cooking, it’s what happens when you put the flame right on the food. Or, in the case of botanical usage, it’s like putting a lit match into direct contact with your herbal blend. It’s quick, but uncontrolled and not a very efficient use of your material.
Conduction, on the other hand is a less direct way of heating. Think about cooking something on your stove top; You’re conducting heat from a radiant source (the flame or hotplate) through a pan, and onto the bottom of your food. It’s far more controlled than, say, just throwing a chicken breast onto the burner or taking a blowtorch to your steak. Conduction heating does require some work and attention to be certain that your meal gets cooked all the way through without burning any part of it, but it’s reasonably efficient, quick, and easy. Applied to conduction vaporizers, it just means that you’re heating the bottom of your herbs first and working up. You will get your best results if you stir it around a bit between pulls.
The simplest explanation of convection heat is to say that it is indirect, and if that’s all you ever understand about it, you’ll be able to see what the advantages and disadvantages are. To carry on with the cooking analogy, it’s a lot like steaming something. The radiant heat from the stovetop is conducted to the water in the pan, which then becomes steam. The steam rises up and passes around the food, heating it evenly on all sides at once. It does take some time to heat the water, and then more time to cook the food. Now, that’s only an analogy because it’s very important to understand that convection vapes do not use steam to heat your botanicals. They use hot air instead. Even so, the air is heated and either forced mechanically or allowed to rise on its own past, around, and through the herbs giving you an extremely even heat which releases consistent levels of aromatics throughout the time you spend with them.
There are advantages to each approach, but we’ll only discuss the conduction and convection styles because putting a direct flame to something and turning it into ash lacks a certain style and subtlety plus it is wasteful.
The pros of conduction vaporizing are:
- Much quicker to heat up
- Usually more affordable
- Usually more portable
- Longer battery life
The pros of convection vaporizing are:
- More even heat means less waste of material
- Better control and precision over the rate the desired compounds are released
- Very unlikely to lead to accidental combustion of herbs
Check out all our convection style vape pens
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