[phil]

Hi everyone...just found this forum and wondering if anyone can help answer a question or 2....

I'm in the middle of making different smoke machine fluids for our short film.
We have a drum of mono-propylene glycol and a drum or polyethylene glycol. Plus distilled water.

I have seen propylene glycol and distilled water used as a smoke fluid but never mono-propylene and distilled water. Is there a difference between mono-propylene and propylene glycol that would make its smoking characteristics different or is it purely a difference in name due to world location?

I made a 60% MPG/40% Distilled Water mix which is quite a thick smoke, will be testing it with polyethylene glycol also.....but does anyone know if using polyethylene changes anything drastically or it's just used to confuse simple folk like myself?

Thanks for any help and info..

Phil

[Stepan]

Propylene glycol and mono-propylene glycol is the same. Polyethylene glycol is usually to heavy for smoke machines.

[phil]

Thanks Stepan,

 I was doing some research on the net and it didn't appear that polyethylene glycol was ever used in smoke machines, although I was given 2 x 44 gallon drums, one with MPG and the other PEG 200, was told the smoke mixture was 50/50 MPG/PEG plus 5% distilled water by volume..

Have spoken to a few industrial chemists via phone and it seems no one knows why PEG would be added to it...hmmm, maybe someone was trying to get rid of some chemicals they didn't want..

[Enthalpy]

While propylene glycol is largely benign (or it was last time I checked it), mono-, di- and tri- ethylene glycol had some higher toxicity, which begins to improve with tetra-ethylene glycol.

In case you plan to produce fog in which artists are to perform for minutes or hours, toxicity should be checked and is a reason for choice.