BG107105A - Method for improving the filling ability of tobacco - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for improving the filling ability of tobacco, such as cut tobacco leaves, or ribs, of tobacco additives, whereby the tobacco material with an initial water content of up to 15 wt.% is treated with a gas, comprising nitrogen and/or argon, at pressure from 50 to 1000 bar with a continuous, or staged compression, followed by a continuous or staged decompression, whereby the compression and decompression steps occur in, either an autoclave, or a cascade-like series of several autoclaves and, finally, a thermal after-treatment of the withdrawn tobacco material. The invention is characterized in that the compression is carried out at a working temperature of over 55 degrees C, preferably from 60 to 90 degrees C and the final water content of the tobacco is in the range of 8 to 14 wt.%. 3 claims

Description

The invention relates to a method for improving the filling capacity of tobacco, such as sliced tobacco leaves or veins and / or tobacco additives, by treating the tobacco material, which initially has a moisture content of up to 15% by weight, with a treatment gas consisting of nitrogen and / or argon at a pressure of 50 to 1 000 bar, with continuous or variable compression, followed by continuous or changing decompression, in which the stages of compression or decompression are either in an autoclave or with a cascade type switching in several autoclaves followed by heat and subsequent processing of the unloaded tobacco material.

Methods of this type, also known as INCOM blowing methods, have been proven to be advantageous in comparison to pressure treatment of tobacco with carbon dioxide, ammonia or volatile organic gases. DE 31 19 330 A1 thus describes such a method of inflating with operating temperatures from 0 to 50 ° C predominant in the autoclave, whereby tobacco material with a moisture content of up to 15% by weight is envisaged to increase the filling capacity or the degree of inflating, and subsequent treatment with water vapor. In this case, the aim was that a lower humidity of the tobacco of 10 to 15% by weight would lead to the desired higher cooling of the tobacco discharge material when the pressure was released.

In addition, DE 34 14 625 C2 discloses a cascading method whereby, by the most widely varying measures, such as cooling the treatment gas prior to reactor loading, autoclave cooling, or the use of supercooled and liquefied treatment gas, a low operating temperature is achieved during the impregnation of tobacco. It is true that tobacco humidity can lie anywhere in the range of, for example, 10 - 30% by weight, however, it is strongly required that the temperature of the autoclave and / or the temperature of its cooling water should not exceed 50 ° C.

It has also been confirmed in accordance with DE 39 35 774 C2 in connection with the cascade-type blow-out method that, in order to maintain the required impregnation temperatures of 25 or 45 ° C, the circulation of the treatment gas through a cooler is provided.

Although good values have already been achieved with the aforementioned blowing methods in terms of increasing the filling capacity of tobacco and / or blowing rate, they are relatively expensive due to the required cooling of the autoclave or autoclaves and the additional cooling of the processing gas.

The aim of the invention is to improve the existing INCOM methods and with equally good or better values regarding the filling capacity or the blowing effect, to avoid the uneconomical cooling measures during compression that were previously considered necessary.

According to the invention, therefore, there is provided a method of the aforementioned type according to the limiting part of the claim, characterized in that the compression is carried out at a reactor temperature of more than 55 ° C.

It has surprisingly been found that in the case of low tobacco humidity in the range up to 15 wt.%, The existing theory requiring a low processing temperature does not lead to optimum swelling results. On the contrary, it was only by increasing the processing temperature during compression that surprisingly good values could be achieved with respect to the blowing effect and / or the filling capacity.

Moreover, according to the method, this has the advantage that the heat of compression does not have to be removed and thus no further cooling of the autoclave or autoclaves is necessary.

In the following example, the method according to the invention is explained in comparison with the prior art. The test results show the different effect of the operating temperature on the inflation rate for different tobacco humidities. According to the existing theory, in the case of tobacco humidity of 18% by weight, an increase in operating temperature above 40 ° C leads to a deterioration of the blowing effect. On the other hand, in the case of tobacco humidity of less than 15% by weight, there are obvious improvements if the high pressure treatment is carried out at operating temperatures of 60 and 80 ° C. The surprisingly achievable inflation rates with low tobacco humidity and higher operating temperatures, in some cases, are even higher than those achieved under normal conditions.

An example

The high-pressure treatment was carried out in a laboratory autoclave with a usable volume of 2 L. A casing was used to circulate the liquid medium to adjust the desired operating temperatures. The pressure increase was performed from below and the decrease from above. Several valves made the target pie chart possible. A compressor was used to adjust the final pressure. A thermocouple measured the temperature of the tobacco in the upper filling section.

The laboratory post-heat treatment apparatus consisted of a permeable wire mesh serving as a conveyor belt, a barrier to form a tobacco mat of the desired width, a steam outlet nozzle in the form of a gap, and a steam suction device located below the belt. The post-treatment was carried out with saturated steam.

The most important processing parameters are shown in the following

Table 1.

Table 1

High pressure treatment Thermal post-treatment Supply of gas Bottom Steam consumption About 10 kg / h Gas extraction Up Nozzle slot About 8 mm The amount of tobacco 300 g Slit width About 160 mm Tobacco container PVC pipe / perforated bottom Transportation About 5 cm / s

The tobacco samples were spread in flat plastic trays and conditioned under standard climatic conditions at 21 ° C and 62% relative humidity. The filling capabilities were determined using a Borgwaldt hydrometer and the specific volume in ml / g was converted to a nominal humidity of 12% by weight and a nominal temperature of 22 ° C. From the raw / comparative sample data and the swollen samples, the relative improvement in the fill capacity can also be calculated, which is also described as the blow rate according to the following formula, in which F _B means the fill capacity of the bulk sample and F _E means the fill capacity on bloated tobacco:

A% = (F _e -F _b ) * 100% / F _b

The tests were performed with tobacco with humidity of 8, 12 and 14 and 18% by weight as a comparison. The operating temperatures were adjusted by thermostat control to 40, 60 and 80 ° C. The final pressure was 700 bar, the pressure reduction was carried out at a time interval of approximately 0.5 min. All tests were based on a homogeneous Virginia tobacco blend and the described saturated steam post-treatment method.

The results of the tests are presented in the following Table 2, and those of the comparative test in the following Table 2a. In the tables, T _A is the temperature of the tobacco prior to removal from the autoclave as the temperature of unloading and Δ% is the relative improvement in filling capacity and / or degree of swelling.

Table 2

Operating Temp

Humidity of

Moisture humidity ° C of tobacco 14% by weight of tobacco 8% by weight of tobacco 12% by weight

T _A ° C Δ% T _A ° C Δ% T _A ° C Δ% 40 -61 59 -53 70 -48 76 60 -48 70 -25 79 -18 83 80 -15 78 -3 81 0 73

Table 2a Operating temperature ° C Tobacco humidity 18% by weight T _A ° C Т _А Δ% 40 -41 80 60 -12 76 80 1 54

The comparison of the above tables clearly shows the positive effect of higher operating temperatures of 60 and 80 ° C on the improvement of the fill capacity if tobacco with a humidity of less than 15% by weight is used.

Claims (3)

Patent Claims 1. A method of improving the filling capacity of tobacco, such as sliced tobacco leaves or veins, and / or tobacco additives, by treating the tobacco material having up to 15% by weight of initial humidity with a treatment gas consisting of nitrogen and / or argon at a pressure of 50 to 1 000 bar with continuous or changing compression followed by continuous or changing decompression, * the compression or decompression steps being carried out either in a single autoclave or with a cascade-type switch in several autoclaves followed by thermal post-processing of the unloaded tobacco material, characterized in that the compression is carried out at an operating temperature above 55 ° C. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that the compression is carried out at an operating temperature of 60 to 90 ° C. The method of claim 1, wherein V The initial moisture content of the tobacco material lies in the range of 8 to 14% by weight.