Effect of a mesoporous catalyst on total particulate matter generated during cigarette smoking

Abstract

During the smoking process, the volatiles and tars generated in a puff can condense or be adsorbed on the tobacco rod and the additive (if present), giving rise to secondary reactions. With aim of obtaining a better understanding of the effect of SBA-15 in reducing the amount of tars in the smoking process of tobacco SBA-15 mixtures, this work studies the effect of the SBA-15 additive on the pyrolysis of the total particulate matter (TPM) generated during the smoking process and condensed on the SBA-15. The studies developed by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and multi-shot pyrolyser (Py/GC/MS) show that the additive delays the decomposition of the TPM at higher temperatures. In addition, a lower amount of nicotine is observed, with greater reductions of the compounds generated during the decomposition at low temperatures and in an oxidizing atmosphere. These results explain the fact the smoking experiments show a significant reduction in the different families of compounds generated, both in the gaseous fraction and in the TPM, in presence of the additive, these reductions being generally higher than those observed when using other analysis techniques, where the secondary tar reactions of the adsorbed tars are not likely to occur.