Classifications

• • A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
  • A24—TOBACCO; CIGARS; CIGARETTES; SIMULATED SMOKING DEVICES; SMOKERS' REQUISITES
  • A24B—MANUFACTURE OR PREPARATION OF TOBACCO FOR SMOKING OR CHEWING; TOBACCO; SNUFF
  • A24B3/00—Preparing tobacco in the factory
  • A24B3/18—Other treatment of leaves, e.g. puffing, crimpling, cleaning
• • A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
  • A24—TOBACCO; CIGARS; CIGARETTES; SIMULATED SMOKING DEVICES; SMOKERS' REQUISITES
  • A24B—MANUFACTURE OR PREPARATION OF TOBACCO FOR SMOKING OR CHEWING; TOBACCO; SNUFF
  • A24B3/00—Preparing tobacco in the factory
  • A24B3/18—Other treatment of leaves, e.g. puffing, crimpling, cleaning
  • A24B3/182—Puffing

Definitions

• the invention relates to a method for increasing the fillability of tobacco materials, e.g. cut tobacco leaves, ribs or vegetable tobacco additives with cell structure by treating the tobacco material having 8 to 16% by weight of initial moisture with a treatment gas consisting of nitrogen and / or argon at pressures of 50 to 1,000 bar in either an autoclave or in cascade-like switching in several Autoclave and subsequent thermal aftertreatment of the discharged tobacco material after decompression.
• a treatment gas consisting of nitrogen and / or argon at pressures of 50 to 1,000 bar in either an autoclave or in cascade-like switching in several Autoclave and subsequent thermal aftertreatment of the discharged tobacco material after decompression.
• the tobacco expansion with inert gases under high pressures which is also known as the INCOM expansion process, has shown its advantages over the pressure treatment of tobacco with carbon dioxide, ammonia or volatile organic gases and is known, for example, from US Pat. No. 4,289,148, according to which tobacco material with a Moisture of over 20 wt .-% is treated at working temperatures in the autoclave between 0 and 50 ° C.
• the pressure is reduced within 0.5 to 10 minutes and in the examples given at 1.3 minutes, after which the discharged tobacco is subjected to a thermal aftertreatment, e.g. is subjected to saturated steam and thereby inflates.
• DE 31 19 330 AI a tobacco material with a reduced moisture content of 10 to 15% by weight is used in addition to the working temperature below 50 ° C. in order to achieve greater cooling of the tobacco material to be discharged when relaxing.
• the pressure reduction times here are 1.3 to 2 minutes.
• DE 34 14 625 C2 discloses a cascade process, according to which a low impregnation temperature of the tobacco is achieved by cooling the treatment gas before loading the reactor, cooling the autoclave or using a supercooled and liquefied treatment gas.
• Pressure reduction times are 0.5 to 10, in particular 1 to 2 minutes.
• the minimum temperature of the tobacco discharged should be below 0 ° C.
• the required low impregnation temperatures of 25 and 45 ° C. are achieved in a cascade-like expansion process by circulating the treatment gas via a cooler.
• the object of the invention is to improve the previous INCOM processes and to achieve equally good or better degrees of swelling regardless of complex cooling measures.
• a method of the type mentioned at the outset is therefore proposed, which is characterized in that the decompression is carried out with at least one holding stage, the pressure of which corresponds to 3 to 60%, preferably 3 to 30% of the original maximum pressure and that Heating of the system under residual pressure is carried out in such a way that the tobacco discharge temperature after the pressure has been completely reduced is in a range from 10 to 80 ° C.
• the pressure reduction from the respective maximum pressure to the pressure of the holding stage is preferably carried out in an interval of 20 seconds to 5 minutes, while the reduction in the residual pressure is carried out in an interval of 3 seconds to 3 minutes. Furthermore, in order to achieve the tobacco discharge temperature according to the invention, it is expedient for the temperature increase to be brought about by a holding time, by circulating the gas under residual pressure via a heat exchanger and / or by flowing heated gas from a further autoclave.
• the high-pressure treatment or the sequence is carried out High pressure treatment and thermal treatment carried out several times with the same tobacco material.
• the initial moisture content of the tobacco material is in the range from 10 to 14% by weight and furthermore if the tobacco material is subjected to thermal aftertreatment with saturated steam.
• the high-pressure treatment was carried out with a treatment gas consisting of nitrogen in a laboratory autoclave with a content of 2 l, a jacket for the circulation of liquid media being used to set the desired working temperatures.
• the pressure build-up or the gas supply to the autoclave took place from below, the pressure reduction or the gas discharge from the autoclave upwards.
• a compressor was used to adjust the final pressure, while the tobacco temperature was measured in the upper segment or in the upper half of the tobacco fill with a thermocouple.
• the laboratory device for the thermal aftertreatment of the tobacco consisted of a permeable conveyor belt or wire mesh, which was operated at a speed of about 5 cm / s.
• the tobacco fleece passed between guide plates was placed under a steam nozzle approximately 160 mm wide with a slot-like outlet opening of about 8 mm aftertreated with about 10 kg / h of saturated steam.
• a steam suction device was located below the conveyor belt opposite the steam nozzle.
• the tobacco samples treated in this way were spread out in flat dishes and conditioned at 21 ° C. and 60% relative humidity.
• the filling capacities were determined with a Borgwaldt densimeter and the specific volume in ml / g converted at a nominal moisture of 12% by weight and a nominal temperature of 22 ° C. From the data of the untreated comparison and the expanded pattern, the relative improvement in filling capacity or the degree of swelling is calculated according to:
• T A means the discharge temperature of the high-pressure treated tobacco.
• test 1 two holding steps of 2 minutes each at 400 and 100 bar were used in pressure reduction and in tests 2 and 3 only one holding step of 2 minutes and 4 minutes at 50 bar, respectively.
• comparative experiment No. 4 the pressure was reduced immediately, i.e. without holding stage in a pressure reduction time of ⁇ 1 min.
• Example 2 Analogously to Example 1, the high-pressure treatment was carried out with 150 g of tobacco at an autoclave working temperature of 40.degree. During the pressure reduction, a holding step of 2 min at 50 bar was used in experiment No. 5 and the gas was circulated during the holding time with the aid of a circulation pump via a heat exchanger at a temperature of 80 ° C. This time, the gas supply during pressure build-up and circulation was from above, the gas discharge at Holding level and pressure reduction down. A sealing ring between the upper limit of the tobacco insert vessel and the autoclave lid ensured the direct entry of the gas into the tobacco insert vessel.
• the procedure was analogous to Example 2, with a holding step of 1 min at 50 bar being constantly regulated during the pressure reduction and heated gas being introduced into the treatment vessel from a second autoclave called the donor. Before the overflow, the donor had a pressure of 100 bar and a working temperature of 80 ° C with a content of 4 1. The gas supply during pressure build-up and overflow was now from below, the gas discharge at holding level and pressure reduction upwards.
• 150 g of tobacco were subjected to a high pressure treatment in a first stage at an operating temperature of the autoclave of 60 ° C. analogously to Example 3 by flowing heated treatment gas from the donor at a holding stage with constant pressure.
• the donor had a pressure of 300 bar and an operating temperature of 80 ° C before overflow; the holding level was set at 200 bar for 1 min.
• the tobacco material from the first stage, expanded and conditioned according to experiment no. 10, was used as the starting material for a further treatment cycle comprising high-pressure treatment and thermal aftertreatment.
• the high-pressure treatment was carried out at 100 g of tobacco and at an operating temperature of the autoclave of 60 ° C. and when the pressure was reduced, a holding stage of 1 min at 100 bar was provided.
• the donor container had a pressure of 200 bar at an operating temperature of 80 ° C before overflow.
• the results of this experiment and of experiment No. 10 are shown in Table 5.
• stage 2 While the expanded tobacco material from stage 1 from example 5 was used for the re-treatment in stage 2, in this example 6 the pressure treatment cycle was carried out twice in succession and only then was the pressure-treated tobacco material fed to the thermal aftertreatment. Both procedures are based on the principle of multiple expansion Repetition of the sequence of high pressure and thermal aftertreatment or only one repeated high pressure treatment and final thermal aftertreatment.
• Example 5 shows that the effect of the first expansion stage can be further increased by the renewed treatment in stage 2 and a tobacco material of extremely high filling capacity is obtained.
• Example 6 is simpler because there is no post-treatment step, but does not reach the maximum value of Example 5.

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• 2000
  • 2000-02-14 DE DE10006424A patent/DE10006424C2/de not_active Expired - Fee Related
• 2001
  • 2001-02-05 CN CN01804935A patent/CN1400873A/zh active Pending
  • 2001-02-05 CZ CZ20023080A patent/CZ20023080A3/cs unknown
  • 2001-02-05 IL IL15079101A patent/IL150791A0/xx unknown
  • 2001-02-05 EP EP01902411A patent/EP1255460B1/de not_active Expired - Lifetime
  • 2001-02-05 ES ES01902411T patent/ES2243436T3/es not_active Expired - Lifetime
  • 2001-02-05 EA EA200200855A patent/EA003544B1/ru not_active IP Right Cessation
  • 2001-02-05 DE DE50106887T patent/DE50106887D1/de not_active Expired - Lifetime
  • 2001-02-05 HU HU0204445A patent/HUP0204445A2/hu unknown
  • 2001-02-05 BR BR0108338-4A patent/BR0108338A/pt not_active Application Discontinuation
  • 2001-02-05 EE EEP200200447A patent/EE200200447A/xx unknown
  • 2001-02-05 WO PCT/EP2001/001227 patent/WO2001058295A1/de not_active Ceased
  • 2001-02-05 MX MXPA02007848A patent/MXPA02007848A/es unknown
  • 2001-02-05 AT AT01902411T patent/ATE300198T1/de not_active IP Right Cessation
  • 2001-02-05 KR KR1020027010638A patent/KR20020075429A/ko not_active Withdrawn
  • 2001-02-05 JP JP2001557417A patent/JP2003525036A/ja not_active Withdrawn
  • 2001-02-05 PL PL01357092A patent/PL194440B1/pl unknown
  • 2001-02-05 SK SK1331-2002A patent/SK13312002A3/sk unknown
  • 2001-02-05 AU AU30248/01A patent/AU3024801A/en not_active Abandoned
  • 2001-02-05 US US10/182,732 patent/US20030075191A1/en not_active Abandoned
  • 2001-02-05 CA CA002400068A patent/CA2400068A1/en not_active Abandoned
  • 2001-02-14 AR ARP010100652A patent/AR034404A1/es unknown
  • 2001-05-02 UA UA2002097455A patent/UA72315C2/uk unknown
• 2002
  • 2002-08-09 NO NO20023781A patent/NO20023781L/no not_active Application Discontinuation
  • 2002-09-13 BG BG107104A patent/BG107104A/xx unknown

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