Plasma Treatment for Cellulose in Tobacco Paper-Base: The Improvement of Surface Hydrophilicity and Mechanical Property

Abstract

This paper reports a plasma treatment (PT) method for improving the surface hydrophilicity and mechanical properties of cellulose in reconstituted tobacco paper-base. The absorption and infiltration rates of water droplets on PT-reconstituted tobacco paper-base-15s were significantly accelerated. Notably, the increased content of methylene and alkyl groups enabled the tobacco paper-base to absorb more useful substrates in the tobacco extract after plasma treatment. In addition, the tensile mechanical performance of reconstituted tobacco was significantly improved after plasma treatment, which indicated that the content of organic matter absorbed by the tobacco paper-base sheet was increased. Moreover, tobacco extract infiltrated on the surface of PT-reconstituted tobacco paper-base reached 37.7° within 30 s, while it reached 79.9° on the reconstituted tobacco paper-base. Finally, the mechanism by which the surface hydrophilicity and mechanical properties of the cellulose in the tobacco paper-base were improved is discussed.

Preparation of tobacco pyrolysis liquids in subcritical/supercritical ethanol and their application in the aroma enhancement of heated cigarettes

“…As a special biomass resource, tobacco is mainly composed of aromatic substances and aroma precursors wrapped in cell walls composed of hemicellulose, cellulose, lignin, pectin, etc. ( Jiang et al, 2016 ; Luo et al, 2021 ; Yang et al, 2022 ; Yu et al, 2022 ; Zhang et al, 2022 ; Yu et al, 2023 ). The strong solubility of supercritical fluids can not only extract small molecules wrapped in tobacco cells to release aroma, but it can also promote the depolymerization and dissolution of cellulose and lignin to accelerate the pyrolysis and liquefaction of tobacco leaves.…”