Original Articles
Lihong Zhaoa,b,*, Yuan Penga a
Abstract
Reconstituted tobacco is typically made by recovered fragments and particles of tobacco, which is customarily coated by impregnating in a bath of a liquor of tobacco extract to rich the reconstituted tobacco base sheets in flavor. An innovative non-contact coating process, spray coating, was proposed in this research, which broke through the limitation in wet strength requirement for reconstituted tobacco base sheets in traditional impregnation coating means. The influences of solid content and flow of tobacco extract, and running speed of coating machine on coating amount and final sheets formation were investigated. The results showed that the coating amount of tobacco extract increased with the solid content and flow of tobacco extract in- creasing, the formation of coated paper sheets was significantly improved by increasing the solid content of tobacco extract and coating speed. It was found that basis weight, bulk, and absorbent velocity of reconstituted tobacco base sheets did not produce a significant effect on spray coating performance. This study confirmed the potential of spraying as a choice for reconstituted tobacco coating.