Tobacco – Cigar or cigarette making – Tobacco feeding
Patent
1997-06-26
2000-02-01
Derrington, James
Tobacco
Cigar or cigarette making
Tobacco feeding
19 98, 19101, 1311092, 131321, A24B 102, D01G 1500, D01G 1502
Patent
active
060191058
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to tobacco processing, and in particular a method and apparatus for opening tobacco for presentation to a separator or classifier.
Cut tobacco is usually derived by separate processing of the mid rib or stem of the tobacco leaf, and the lamina section of the leaf. The stem and lamina section may be detached from each other manually or by a threshing process. The stem is not constant in size and has small veins running from it, that pass into the lamina section of the leaf. Existing leaf preparation methods do not fully separate the veins and small stems from the lamina. Consequently, the material called lamina and presented for cutting contains a quantity of residual stem and veins, which will be cut with the lamina.
In cut form, these residuals are small hard pieces, slithers and needles mixed and embedded in a tangled matrix of long cut lamina strands. The presence of these residuals in cigarette tobacco is undesirable because they reduce the quality of the finished cigarette and the efficiency of cigarette manufacture. The undesirable particles are often referred to as objectionable tobaccos.
Objectionable tobaccos also exist, for example, in the separately processed stem after it has been cut. But this cut stem product is not entangled and pneumatic separation using, for example, devices as disclosed in EP-A-0511257, is able to remove a large proportion of the objectionable tobacco. On the other hand, attempts to use pneumatic separation to remove objectionable tobaccos from cut lamina have not been successful because a large proportion of the objectionables are trapped in the tangled strands of the cut lamina and do not have the opportunity to drop out in the pneumatic separator.
Cigarette making machines may also include a winnowing system to remove objectionable tobaccos prior to the formation of the cigarette.
Before being fed to the cigarette making machine, the cut lamina is combined with cut tobacco produced by a number of different processes. When combining the tobaccos, there is an opportunity for residual objectionable tobaccos to become entangled in the strands of cut lamina. This increases the difficulty of separating objectionables at the winnower and in consequence, these winnowing systems are of limited effectiveness. For example, if a winnowing system is set to remove 3% of total product, it is likely to remove about 1.5% objectionables and 1.5% non-objectionables and to leave 40 to 50% of the original input of objectionables in the tobacco presented for cigarette manufacture.
When tobacco for cigarette manufacture is composed of separately processed cut lamina and cut stem, the likely level of objectionable tobaccos is in the range of 1 to 6% of the total product, and a significant proportion of the objectionables are due to stem and vein residuals in the lamina presented for cutting. The expected level of residuals in the lamina presented for cutting depends on the method and quality criteria applied during detachment of the stem from the lamina, usually via a threshing process. Typically, the target level of residuals is 1 to 3.5%. The higher the permitted level of residuals, the more gentle the threshing process. While resulting in a higher level of potentially objectionable residues, the gentler threshing process also produces more larger pieces and fewer smaller pieces of detached lamina. This results in less wastage and more economic use of the lamina.
In some parts of the world it is customary not to thresh and not to detach the lamina from the stem. Consequently, the whole leaf is presented for cutting. Cut whole leaf will contain an increased level of objectionable tobacco particles (typically over 16%) because the stem has been cut with the lamina. Moreover, the cut lamina strands will be longer and more entangled than those produced from threshed lamina.
If a way can be found to remove objectionables from cut lamina and cut whole leaf more effectively, the potential benefits are: economic use of threshing systems and of detached lamina; into a non-obje
REFERENCES:
patent: 255494 (1882-03-01), Curtis et al.
Derrington James
GBE Internatinal PLC
Walls Dionne A.
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