Skip to main content
CORESTA Congress, Kyoto, 2004, PT 14

Study on effective reduction of hazardous components in tobacco smoke using the natural zeolite

POKRAJAC M.S.; JORDIL Y.; MUELLER J.
TDR d.o.o., R&D, Rovinj, Croatia.

In order to design a less hazardous cigarette, modern cigarette designs have been directed towards finding out and combining such substances that, with their own qualities, contribute to remove very hazardous smoke constituents more effectively. Among these substances zeolites, sepiolites, silica gel, various kinds of activated charcoal and others can be found, which have often been subject of numerous cigarette smoke researches in the last years. In this paper the benefit of the natural zeolite TMAZ - tribomechanicaly activated zeolite - mineral from clinoptilolite group, obtained by procedure of tribomechanical activation, combined with and compared to activated charcoal will be considered. TMAZ was used as an additive both to the reconstituted tobacco (recon tobacco), and to the cellulose acetate cigarette filter whereas the activated charcoal was used only as an additive to the cigarette filter. The amount of TMAZ in recon-tobacco was 10% and 20% respectively. Cigarettes with triple filter based on cellulose acetate were made from combining TMAZ with activated charcoal or with their 100% content in the filter. Tobacco blends with different portions of reconstituted tobacco were prepared and samples of various cigarettes manufactured only for research purposes with no commercial value. The cigarettes made following the design of their constituents were selected and subsequently subjected to analyses in order to establish the presence of special analytes in smoke condensate, semivolatile and volatile components i.e. Hoffmann s list analytes. The results obtained are optimistic and point out the effectiveness of the constituents i.e. zeolite added to recon-tobacco and above all to cigarette filters, alone or combined with charcoal, as several groups of special analytes showed significant effect of absorption, especially those from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), carbonyls, aromatic amines and groups of heavy metals.