RU2328951C1 - Tobacco cake subdividing apparatus for use in cut tobacco expanding system - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: tobacco products.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to a subdividing apparatus used in a cut tobacco expanding system for declumping tobacco cakes. A subdividing apparatus comprises a primary declumper arranged to receive a tobacco cake of impregnated cut tobacco taken out of an impregnation container and subdivide the received tobacco cake into tobacco loaves, and a secondary declumper arranged to receive the tobacco loaves from the primary declumper, subdivide the received tobacco loaves first into tobacco chunks and then further subdivide the tobacco chunks into tobacco lumps. The secondary declumper includes paired rotary rakes and a rotatable rake drum located below the rotary rakes.

EFFECT: fine subdividing of a tobacco cake of impregnated cut tobacco and reducing damage thereof.

10 cl, 9 dwg

Description

The invention relates to a grinding device used in a system for expanding shredded tobacco for crushing tobacco cake, which is a dense mass of shredded tobacco, impregnated (impregnated) with liquid carbon dioxide, into small pieces before subjecting the impregnated shredded tobacco to drying in a stream of hot air.

Expanded cut tobacco is used as one of the cigarette fillers. Expanded cut tobacco increases the efficiency of filling cigarettes with tobacco fillers. Expanded shredded tobacco is produced using an expansion system that includes an impregnation tank. Chopped tobacco is served in a container for impregnation, in which it is impregnated (impregnated) with liquid carbon dioxide. Then, the impregnated shredded tobacco is removed from the impregnation tank and fed to the device for drying in a stream of hot air. A device for drying in a stream of hot air quickly dries the impregnated cut tobacco, and during this drying, the solid carbon dioxide contained in the impregnated cut tobacco evaporates, so that carbon monoxide gas is released from the impregnated cut tobacco. With the release of gaseous carbon monoxide, the volume of cut tobacco increases. Thus, the soaked chopped tobacco “swells”.

When the impregnated shredded tobacco is removed from the impregnation container, it is mainly in the form of a piece of compacted mass called tobacco cake. Tobacco cake cannot be dried immediately in a stream of hot air.

Therefore, a swelling system typically provides a cutting device for grinding tobacco cake, and such a cutting device is described, for example, in US Pat. No. 4,307,735. The cutting device of this US patent includes several rotating rolls arranged in parallel in a horizontal plane, and a plurality of knives mounted on rotating shafts. Tobacco cake is fed from above into the cutting device on the knives and crushed by rotating the knives.

However, the cutting device in this US patent does not crush the impregnated tobacco, but cut it into small pieces. Therefore, when this sliced impregnated tobacco is then dried and converted to expanded tobacco, the particles of the resulting expanded tobacco are small in size and are not suitable for use as a cigarette filler.

To crush tobacco cake (without cutting), you can use a regular rotating comb. However, such a device cannot ideally crush tobacco cake into pieces of the desired or smaller size, so that many agglomerates of larger size remain, i.e. large agglomerates called tobacco briquettes, and medium agglomerates called tobacco pieces. If the tobacco briquettes and pieces are immediately fed to the drying apparatus in a stream of hot air, the impregnated cut tobacco in the form of tobacco briquettes and pieces cannot be uniformly dried, which will lead to a decrease in the quality of the resulting expanded cut tobacco.

The main objective of this invention is to provide a device for grinding tobacco cake, capable of grinding well cake impregnated shredded tobacco obtained in the container for impregnation of the expansion system, and reduce the destruction of impregnated shredded tobacco.

To solve this problem, the device for grinding tobacco cake according to the invention contains a first crusher for receiving tobacco cake from a container for impregnation, separating the obtained tobacco cake into tobacco briquettes and feeding tobacco briquettes, a second crusher for receiving tobacco briquettes from the first crusher and grinding obtained tobacco briquettes moreover, the second crusher contains a pair of rotating combs, horizontally separated from each other, for separating tobacco briquettes into pieces of tobacco and supply pieces of tobacco further, and movable ridge wall located below the double rotating combs, the movable comb wall moving on one side, where there are one rotating combs, on the other side, where there are other rotating combs, while vertically overlapping the rotating combs, so that it acts together with by rotating combs to grind pieces of tobacco into pieces of tobacco.

In the above grinding apparatus, the tobacco cake is first roughly divided into tobacco briquettes by a first mill, and then the resulting tobacco briquettes are ground further in a second mill in two stages. Specifically, the first and second crushers crush the tobacco briquettes to pieces of tobacco using double rotating combs, and then grind the pieces of tobacco further to pieces of tobacco through the interaction between the double rotating combs and the movable comb wall. Since the tobacco cake is crushed into pieces of tobacco in several stages, the grinding force applied at each stage is low, so that the destruction of the impregnated shredded tobacco is significantly reduced.

The movable ridge wall overlaps a pair of rotating combs so that it comes into contact with the rotating combs. Thus, the movable wall and the pair of rotating combs act together to grind pieces of tobacco. In this case, it is desirable that the second crusher further comprises an overlap adjustment means for adjusting the overlap between the rotating combs and the movable crest wall. The second crusher may further comprise speed adjusting means for adjusting the rotational speed of the rotating combs and the speed of the movable crest wall.

When adjusting the overlap, the device, the adjusting overlap, reduces the destruction of the impregnated shredded tobacco and sets the size of the pieces of tobacco obtained by grinding pieces of tobacco.

The speed adjuster reduces the destruction of the impregnated shredded tobacco and sets the grinding characteristics of the second crusher.

Specifically, each of the rotating combs may include a rotating roller, and the cylindrical surfaces of the roller are provided with several rows of pins. In this case, the rows of pins are located along the perimeter of the roll at a distance from each other, and each row contains many pins located along the axial direction of the roll at a distance from each other.

It is desirable that there is a mutual arrangement between the twin rotating combs so that the comb pins are at the same positions or in phase relative to the axial direction of the roll, while the rows of pins are in different angular phases relative to the direction along the circumference of the roll. Thus, at any angle of rotation of the rotating combs, comb pins in at least one row of pins overlap the space between the rollers and prevent the passage of tobacco briquettes between the rollers.

In one aspect, the movable ridge wall is located below and in the middle between the twin rotary combs and includes a rotating shaft extending parallel to the rotating combs and a plurality of ridge discs mounted on the rotating shaft. The ridge disks are located in the axial direction of the rotating shaft at a distance from each other so that each ridge disk is between the pins of each rotating combs. In this case, the ridge discs overlap the pins of the rotating combs.

In another aspect, the movable ridge wall is below the twin rotating combs and includes a conveyor passing through the rotating combs and provided with several rows of pins. The rows of pins are transverse to the conveyor, and each of the rows contains a plurality of pins spaced apart in the direction of conveyor movement. As the conveyor moves, each row of pins extends between the pins of each rotating comb. In this case, the pins on the conveyor overlap the pins of the rotating combs.

Brief Description of the Drawings

Figure 1: diagram of a system of expansion of cut tobacco.

Figure 2: top view of the second crusher according to one embodiment.

Figure 3: a perspective view of part of a second crusher of Figure 2.

Figure 4: transmission diagram for the second crusher of Figure 2.

Figure 5: diagram of an adjustment device for adjusting the level or height of the rotating combs of Figure 2.

6: a graph of the relationship between the rotation speed of the second crusher and the fraction of the remaining pieces of tobacco.

7: a graph of the relationship between the rotation speed of the second crusher and the average particle size of the impregnated shredded tobacco.

Fig. 8 is a graph of the relationship between the distance between the rotating combs and the comb drum and the average particle size of the impregnated shredded tobacco.

Figure 9: diagram of a second crusher in a modified embodiment.

The tobacco expansion system of FIG. 1 includes an impregnation tank 2. The impregnation tank 2 receives chopped tobacco and soaks the resulting chopped tobacco with liquid carbon dioxide. Then, the impregnated shredded tobacco is removed from the impregnation tank 2, passes through the grinding device 4, and then fed to the device for drying in a stream of hot air.

In this embodiment, the grinding device 4 includes a first crusher 6, a collection container 8 and a second crusher 10. Specifically, as shown in FIG. 1, the first crusher 6 includes a grill 12. The grill 12 extends horizontally and contains several parallel rods 12a. Directly above the grating 12 in the longitudinal direction of the grating 14 are several rotating combs at a certain distance from each other. Each rotating combs 14 have a rotating roller 14a and two rows of pins 14b extending from the cylindrical surface of the roller 14a. Two rows of pins 14b are diametrically opposed to the roll 14a, and the individual pins 14b have at the end a bend along the direction of rotation of the roll 14a.

The impregnated cut tobacco, taken out of the impregnation container 2, in the form of tobacco cake is fed to the first crusher 6 on top of this device 6. The first crusher 6 divides the tobacco cake into a plurality of tobacco briquettes under the combined action of the rotating combs 14 and the grill 12 and delivers the resulting tobacco briquettes into a collection container 8. The size of the tobacco briquettes is determined primarily by the pitch of the comb pins 14b and the distance between the parallel rods 12a of the grate 12.

Tobacco briquettes are temporarily located in the collection container 8, and then tobacco briquettes are fed from the collection container 8 to the second crusher 10.

When the tobacco cake passes through the first crusher 6, the first crusher 6 causes some impregnated shredded tobacco particles to separate from the tobacco cake and the tobacco briquettes. It is understood that these separated particles of the impregnated shredded tobacco are also fed to the collecting container 8 together with the tobacco briquettes.

Next, with reference to FIGS. 2-5, a second crusher 10 is described.

As shown in FIG. 2, the second crusher 10 comprises a housing 16. The housing 16 is open at the top and bottom, respectively. A pair of rotating combs 18 is installed inside the housing 16. The rotating combs 18 are horizontally separated from each other.

As described above, the rotating combs 14, each rotating combs 18 contains a roller 20. The roller 20 contains a shaft mounted for rotation on the housing 16 at opposite ends of the roller shaft. The roll 20 comprises four rows of 22 pins on its cylindrical surface, and these rows are placed around the perimeter of the roll 20 at regular intervals. Each row 22 comprises a plurality of pins 24 extending from the cylindrical surface of the roll 20. The pins 24 are located along the axial direction of the roll 20 with one pitch P and in one phase. That is, the comb pins 24 in four rows of pins are at the same positions in the axial direction of the roll 20.

As is clear from FIG. 2, the comb pins 24 of the twin rotary combs 18 are at the same angle in the axial direction of the roll 20. Thus, the pair of rotary combs 18 has four teeth 24 in one vertical phase plane.

As is clear from Figure 3, the rotating combs 18 rotate around their respective axes with a phase difference of 45 °. Thus, if in this pair the rotating combs 18 rotate in opposite directions at the same speed, the rows of 22 pins of one twin rotating combs 18 and the rows of 22 pins of the other combs pass between the rolls 20 of the rotating combs 18 alternately. Thus, if you look at the pair of rotating combs 18 from above, the space between the rollers 20 is always covered by one of the rows of 22 pins of a pair of rotating combs 18.

More specifically, each tooth 24 has a slightly shorter length than half the distance between the rollers 20, and a diameter of about 9 mm. The pitch P between the comb pins 24 is determined depending on the size of the inlet of the apparatus for drying in a stream of hot air, and it is preferably smaller than the pitch between the aforementioned pins 14b. In the present embodiment, the pitch P between the comb pins 24 is equal to or less than 100 mm.

Below the pair of rotating combs 18 is a ridge drum 26 forming a movable ridge wall. The ridge drum 26 includes a rotary shaft 28, the rotary shaft 28 being located between the rollers 20. The rotary shaft 28 runs parallel to the rollers 20 and is rotatably mounted on the housing 16 at its opposite ends.

A plurality of ridge discs 30 are mounted on the rotary shaft 28. The ridge discs 30 are arranged along the axial direction of the rotary shaft 28 at regular intervals so that each ridge disc 30 is between the pins 24. Therefore, the pitch between the ridge discs 30 is equal to the pitch P between the comb pins 24 and the distance between the ridge disc 30 and the adjacent tooth 24 in the axial direction of the rotary shaft 28 is P / 2.

In the present embodiment, the rotating shaft 28 has a diameter almost equal to the diameter of the roll 20, and the ridge disk has an outer diameter almost equal to the outer diameter of the rotating combs 18.

A pair of rotating combs 18 and ridge drum 26 rotate under the action of a common electric motor 32. Figure 4 shows the line of energy transfer from the electric motor 32 to the combs 18 and the drum 26.

The cylindrical shaft of each roll 20 has an end extending from the housing 16, and, as shown in FIG. 4, sprocket gears 34, 36 are installed on the respective protruding ends of the roll shaft. The rotating shaft 28 also has an end protruding from the housing 16, and on this the sprocket 38 is installed at the end.

The sprocket 36 mounted on the motor 32 side of FIG. 4 has a double structure including two sprocket links 36a, 36b. The sprocket link 36a and the drive sprocket 40 of the motor 40 are connected by a drive chain 42.

Further, the tension sprocket 44 is rotatably mounted on the housing 16. The tension sprocket 44 is located on the motor 32 side. An endless chain 46 is installed around the tension sprocket 44, sprocket link 36b, sprocket 34 and sprocket 38. Therefore, when the electric motor 32 is running, the drive the force is first transmitted by the drive chain 42 to one of the rolls 20 or, in other words, to the rotating combs 18 from the side of the electric motor 32, so that these rotating combs 18 rotate counterclockwise, as shown by the arrow th at 4.

The movement of the drive chain 42 rotates the sprocket link 36b, which causes the link chain 46 to move. In this way, the other rotating combs 18 and the comb drum 26 are also rotated, so to speak, associated with the rotating combs 18 from the motor side. Here, the other rotating combs 18 and the comb drum 26 rotate clockwise, as shown by the arrow in FIG. 4. It should be noted that, in FIG. 4, each rotating comb 18 is shown as an orbit described when rotated by the end of the comb tooth 24.

As shown in FIG. 2, an electric motor 32 is electrically connected to an inverter type by a speed control device 48. The speed control device 48 can adjust the rotation speed of the electric motor 32 and, therefore, the rotation speed of the twin rotating combs 18 and the comb drum 26.

Next, the comb drum 26 is mounted on the housing 16 using level adjusting means. The level adjusting means can set the level, or height, of the comb drum 26 with respect to the twin rotary combs 18 or, in other words, the vertical distance D between the comb drum 26 and the twin rotary combs 18.

More specifically, as shown in FIG. 5, the level control device 49 includes a pair of slots 50 formed in the housing 16. The slots 50 extend vertically. The opposite ends of the rotary shaft 28 of the comb drum 26 pass through both slots 50, respectively. The support plate 52 is attached to the rotating shaft 28 at its opposite ends using a bearing. Each support plate 52 is secured to the housing 16 by four fixing bolts 54 and nuts (not shown) located at the four corners of the support plate.

For mounting bolts 54, a plurality of through holes 56 are formed in the housing 16. The through holes 56 are vertically spaced apart from each other on both sides of the slit 50. Thus, the level, or height, of the comb drum 26, namely the distance D, can be adjusted by selecting through holes 56 into which the mounting bolts 54 are to be inserted.

By adjusting the distance D, it is possible to change the overlap of the tooth 24 with the ridge disk 30 within the length of the tooth 24. In the present embodiment, the distance D is set in the range from 85 mm (which corresponds to the maximum overlap) to 155 mm (corresponds to the minimum overlap).

It should be noted that the tension sprocket 44 is also mounted vertically on the housing 16 and that the level or height of the tension sprocket 44 can be adjusted in the same way as for the comb drum 26. Therefore, even if the distance D is set, the tension sprocket 44 can communicate desired link chain tension 46.

When the tobacco briquettes are fed from the collection container 8 to the second crusher 10, the tobacco briquettes are divided into pieces of tobacco smaller than the tobacco briquettes by rotating the double rotary dies 18 or, in other words, the pins 24 of the double rotary dies 18, and the resulting pieces of tobacco are fed to the comb drum 26.

The diameter of the comb pins 24 is about 9 mm, which is enough to withstand the light load required for the separation of tobacco briquettes. Therefore, when tobacco briquettes are divided by pins 24 of the comb, the destruction of the impregnated shredded tobacco is reduced.

Then, when the pieces of tobacco pass through the comb drum 26, the comb discs 30 act together with the rotating comb 18 to separate the pieces of tobacco that pass between the rotating comb 18 and then into pieces of tobacco of a desired size smaller than the pieces of tobacco.

Therefore, from the second crusher 10 pieces of tobacco come with a certain fraction of the particles of the impregnated cut tobacco. The impregnated shredded tobacco particles include not only those particles that were separated by crushing the tobacco cake, but also particles separated by the crushing of tobacco briquettes and pieces of tobacco.

Pieces of tobacco and impregnated shredded tobacco particles coming from the second crusher 10 are then fed to the aforementioned device for drying in a stream of hot air, quickly dried and thereby “explode” in a device for drying in a stream of hot air.

Figure 6 shows the result of an experiment in which examples E1-E4 of a second crusher 10 were used, differing by the distance P / 2 between the pins 24 and the flange disk 30 and the distance D, with a change in the rotation speed of the rotating combs 18 and the flange drum 26, and the proportion was measured pieces of tobacco remaining in the impregnated cut tobacco coming from the second crusher 10, and the average particle size of the impregnated cut tobacco coming from the second crusher 10.

The distance P / 2 and the distance D in examples E1-E4 are as shown in table 1 below.

Table 1 P / 2 (mm) D (mm) Example E1 25 85 Example E2 25 135 Example E3 40 85 Example E4 40 135

The proportion of the remaining pieces of tobacco is expressed as a percentage relative to the number of tobacco briquettes supplied from the first crusher 6, which is taken as 100. As is clear from FIG. 6, in Examples E1-E4, the proportion of the remaining pieces of tobacco was reduced to about 40% or lower.

As is clear from Fig. 7, considering that the initial average particle size of the cut tobacco before impregnation was 2.41 mm, the impregnated cut tobacco obtained in Examples E1-E4 of the second crusher 10, the average particle size decreased to only 80-93% from initial average particle size.

The dashed line in Fig. 7 shows the average particle size (1.66 mm) of the impregnated shredded tobacco obtained for the comparative example of the second crusher. A comparative example of a second crusher includes a rotor and a spiral row of comb pins located on the cylindrical surface of the rotor. In addition, according to a comparative example of the second crusher, the proportion of remaining pieces of tobacco was about 80% or higher, and the average particle size of the impregnated shredded tobacco was reduced to about 70% of the initial average particle size.

Thus, in the grinding device 4 with examples E1-E4 as the second crusher 10, the tobacco cake was well divided into small pieces, which allowed the impregnated shredded tobacco to uniformly dry after that. Further, since the degradation of the impregnated shredded tobacco is reduced, high-quality swelled shredded tobacco can be obtained.

As shown in FIGS. 6 and 7, in any of the examples E1-E4 of the second crusher 10, as the rotational speed of the second crusher 10 increases, the number of remaining pieces of tobacco decreases, and the average particle size of the impregnated cut tobacco decreases.

Thus, according to the measurement results of FIG. 7, the relationship between the rotation speed of the second crusher and the average particle size of the impregnated cut tobacco, shown in FIG. 8, is determined. Fig. 8 shows that at a fixed rotation speed of the second crusher, as the distance D between the rotating combs 18 and the comb drum 26 increases, the average particle size of the impregnated cut tobacco decreases. Therefore, by choosing the distance D or, in other words, the overlap between the comb disk 30 and the pins 24, it is possible to set the average particle size of the impregnated shredded tobacco in the desired range.

More specifically, it is believed that the destruction of the impregnated shredded tobacco is reduced for the following reasons: as the distance D increases, the overlap decreases, so that the proportion of pieces of tobacco passing through the comb drum 26 without breaking by the rotating combs 18 and the comb drum 26 increases.

Thus, the degree to which tobacco pieces are divided, or, in other words, the average particle size of the impregnated cut tobacco, can easily be set to the desired level, to a certain extent, depending on the distance D, i.e. the distance between the rotating combs 18 and the comb drum 26.

The present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, but can be modified in various ways.

Rotating combs 18 and ridge drum 26 of the second crusher 10 can be driven independently by separate electric motors.

Further, as shown in FIG. 9, the second crusher can use the movable crest wall of the conveyor instead of crest drum 26. In this case, the movable crest wall is a conveyor 58 located below the twin rotating combs 18, and several rows of pins 60 are provided on the conveyor 58. The rows of pins 60 are transversely relative to the conveyor 58 at a distance from each other, and each row contains a plurality of pins 62 spaced apart in the direction of movement of the conveyor 58 from each other.

As the conveyor 58 moves, each row of 60 pins extends between the comb pins 24 of each of the rotary combs 18. Similar to the ridge drum 26 described above, the level or height and speed of the conveyor 58 can be adjusted.

In the case of a conveyor-type movable ridge wall, when the conveyor 58 is moving, each row of pins 60 extends between the pins 24 of each rotating combs 18, so that the rows of pins 60 and rows 22 of comb pins cooperate to grind pieces of tobacco.

Claims (10)

1. A device for grinding tobacco cake for use in a system for expanding shredded tobacco in which the shredded tobacco is impregnated with liquid carbon dioxide in an impregnation tank and the tobacco cake of impregnated shredded tobacco taken from the impregnation tank is supplied to said grinding device comprising a first crusher for receiving tobacco cake, separating the resulting tobacco cake into tobacco briquettes and serving tobacco briquettes; and a second crusher for receiving tobacco briquettes from said first crusher, separating the obtained tobacco briquettes, said second crusher comprising a pair of rotating combs arranged horizontally at a distance from each other, for separating tobacco briquettes into pieces of tobacco and supplying pieces of tobacco further, and a movable comb a wall located between the twin rotating combs, the movable comb wall moving from one side where one rotating combs are located to the other side where I have other rotating combs, vertically overlapping the rotating combs, so that the movable comb wall acts together with the rotating combs to separate the pieces of tobacco into pieces of tobacco. 2. The device according to claim 1, in which the specified pair of rotating combs overlaps the specified movable ridge wall so that rotating combs come into contact with said movable ridge wall. 3. The device according to claim 2, wherein said second crusher further comprises an adjustment device for adjusting the overlap between said rotating combs and said movable crest wall. 4. The device according to claim 2, wherein said second crusher further comprises a speed adjustment means for adjusting a rotation speed of said rotating combs and a moving speed of said movable crest wall. 5. The device according to claim 2, in which each of these rotating combs includes a rotating roller and several rows of pins located on the cylindrical surface of the roll. 6. The device according to claim 5, in which the rows of pins are located around the perimeter of the roll at a distance from each other, and each of the rows contains many pins located along the axial direction of the roll at a distance from each other. 7. The device according to claim 6, in which between the indicated twin rotating combs, the pins are in the same phase relative to the axial direction of the roll, and the rows of pins are in different phases in the direction around the circumference of the roll. 8. The device according to claim 7, wherein said movable ridge wall is below said twin rotating combs and in the middle between said twin rotating combs and includes a rotating shaft extending parallel to said rotating combs, with a plurality of ridge disks located on the rotating shaft and ridge disks spaced along the axial direction of the rotating shaft to a distance from each other, so that each ridge disk is between the pins of each rotating combs. 9. The device according to claim 7, in which said movable ridge wall is below said twin rotating combs and includes a conveyor extending transversely to said rotating combs, and several rows of pins are provided on the container. 10. The device according to claim 9, in which the rows of pins are located transverse to the conveyor at a distance from each other, and each of the rows contains many pins spaced in the direction of movement of the conveyor at such a distance from each other that when the conveyor moves, each of the rows of pins passes between the pins of each rotating comb.

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