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CORESTA Meeting, Smoke Science/Product Technology, 2011, Graz, ST 26

Nicotine particle / gas phase distribution trends: denuder tube studies

JOHN E.(1); LIU C.(1); McAUGHEY J.(1); MARINER D.(1); McADAM K.G.(1); DOBE S.(2); SEBESTYEN Z.(2); BAKOS I.(2)
(1) British American Tobacco, Group R&D, Southampton, UK; (2) Chemical Research Center, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

Mainstream cigarette smoke comprises a complex dynamic mixture of many thousand substances resulting from the incomplete combustion of tobacco. Substances may be distributed within the gas and / or particle phases of smoke. A specific substance, such as nicotine, may also be distributed between both gaseous and particle phases. An advanced denuder tube design has been developed to study dynamic particle / gas phase equilibria, described previously, with emphasis on controlled smoking environmental parameters such as relative humidity (30, 45, 60% RH), flow rate (5 cm3 s-1) and denuder temperature (298, 310, 323 K). The experiments provide an estimate of gas phase nicotine levels in smoke from the amounts deposited on the denuder walls. The fraction of nicotine deposited on the walls is influenced both by smoking relative humidity and denuder tube temperature. As experimental temperature increases, the fraction of nicotine depositing on the walls increases. Increasing atmospheric RH was found to reduce the fraction of nicotine captured by the walls, particularly at the lower temperatures of the study.