[D1te71]

Hi just curious is tobacco smoke reactive against anything..maybe creating a visual reaction ie color change,
There's about 156 measurable constituents of smoke with nicotine ammonia formadehyde carbon monoxide and tar etc having highest levels, be good if the reacting agent was a solid or crystalyne in nature
An anyone shed help?

[Arkcon]

A lot of the simplest to understand chemistry occurs in a solution of water, and tobacco smoke is a very dry cloud of particles, with , like you said, hundreds of constituents.  Also by definition, cigarette smoke is very diffuse, you're not going to get a big indicting color change.  Maybe the best way is a physical way -- the standard smoke detector method.

[D1te71]

Yeah you're right, thanks for the reply
I was looking at passive air sampling badges - some of these use color indicating method that produces results over an elapsed time periods from very low ppm levels in air, but information on those reagents is very hard to find anywhere,
How feasible would it be to design something similar that is excited by nicotine and or multiple vapor compounds with in tobacco smoke?

[curiouscat]

The other possibility might be some sort of Liquid Crystal detector. I've seen prototypes for Chemical Warfare agent detection.

They can be made reasonably specific to a molecule and the Crystals amplify so ppm quantities are detectable.

[D1te71]

There's no doubt it can be done, there are atmosphere detectors that use chromgraphic reagents in existence now.. But where would I go to have this studied, a chemical engineer or what?