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Some guy thinks this is plume

I remember consulting our resident mad scientist years ago about this subject. (He got so sick of my questions he moved to an entirely different continent soon after :)) My question to him was a result of someone posting on OLH that they had somebody on their home board analyze "plume" and found it contained 70% propylene glycol. I was asking if PG could form naturally in a humidor (I don't know if this guy was using the PG as a humidification device in his humidor or not) and our mad scientist seemed to think it could, although he was puzzled by how it could crystalize. Below is the mad scientist's reply to me. I will give $1 to anyone capable of deciphering it for me because all these years later and I still haven't a clue what he was on about.

You are correct glycerol would come from the fats and oils in the tobacco. The fatty acids will come off the glycerol through hydrolysis. The humidity in the humidor will keep water around enough that the process can happen, albeit slow. If the hydrogen in one hydrolysis attacks the adjacent carbon of the glycerol unit you could conceivably get propylene glycol. Other wise you need a dehydration step followed by hydrogenation ( loss of water then reducing the resulting double bond). I could draw it out if you want to see it graphically. It isn't what I would have expected but there is a logical explanation of why it would be the major component. The only question that I have is if this would crystallize on its own or does it need some of the other material as a site of nucleation?
Wilkey?
 
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