Cigarette Peak Coal Temperature Measurements

A large body of experimental evidence supports the dependence of cigarette smoke composition on temperature. Phenol formation, during the pyrolysis of wood lignin, increased fourfold between 400° C and 6oo° C but decreased more than tenfold between 6oo° C and 900° C (1.). In a study of the pyrolysis of tobacco leaf constituents (2), it was found that yields of benzene and biphenyl increase 1' draili.atically" when the temperature increases from 420° C to 820° C. As the temperature approaches 82o° C, the yield of fused-ring aromatics (indene, acenaphthene, etc.) also increases. A patented process (3) claims to reduce the polycyclic hydrocarbons in smoke by increasing the combustion temperature. The temperature increase can be achieved, it is claimed, by the addition of alkaline earth performates to the tobacco. Another patent (4) proposes the reduction of temperature from 88o° C to 720° C by the addition of borates, phosphates and silicates in order to reduce the aromatic hydrocarbon content of the smoke. Significant to this problem is work that was performed on the pyrolysis of organic compounds. Lam (5) obtained ;,4-benzpyrene and other aromatic compounds from aliphatic hydrocarbons heated at 700°-8oo° C; at 6oo° C, no such compounds were formed. The same author reported quantitative correlations between pyrolysis temperature and the generation of certain compounds (6). Heating 500 mg of tobacco paraffins at 850° C produced 1. mg 3,4-benzpyrene, and at a higher temperature (970° C) only 0.37 mg. To these data, related to cigarette smoke, can be added the large volume of available information pertaining to the effect of temperature on the products of thermal q:-acking of petroleum fractions.