Diffusion of Moisture in a Cigarette Tobacco Column at Room Conditions

Abstract

The moisture content of cigarettes has a significant impact on the shelf life and the taste of the products as well as various physical properties of cigarettes including loose ends, burning rate, hardness, and pressure drop. To prepare better products it would be helpful to develop proper mathematical models for the simulation of moisture diffusion characteristic dynamics in a cigarette. In this work, four mathematical models have been developed with appropriate assumptions adequate to analyze the dynamics of moisture diffusion in cigarettes. The simulation of the derived models was also carried out in this work. When the theoretical values produced from each model were compared with the corresponding experimental data, it was found that three models (I-II, II, III) can be used to explain the behavior of moisture in cigarettes. Convective mass transfer coefficients and effective moisture diffusivities that fit best were obtained by a regression analysis of the model using the experimental values. The simulation of the models revealed that there is no significant positional dependence of moisture content inside a tobacco column because most of the moisture dries out radially through the cigarette wrapper. The drying rate of moisture in a tobacco column is rarely affected by effective moisture diffusivity, but strongly influenced by convective mass transfer. To prevent quality deterioration of the cigarettes during long-term storage, it is concluded that improvement of the cigarette wrapper and air tightness of the package, which are directly related to the convective mass transfer, is very important.