Abstract
Manipulation of the effeluent smoke composition from a cigarette will be facilitated by a working model of the combustion and smoke formation process. A first step toward such a model is presented. For simplicity, the situation considered here is steady-draw smoking from ignition. A one-dimensional model of the actual two-dimensional burning process is derived from the usual conservation laws (mass, momentum, energy, species). The chemical processes are simplified by the concept of grouping of reactions. The model thus includes only a one-step char oxidation reaction and a one-step pyrolysis reaction; the kinetic parameters of these are obtained by thermal analysis of tobacco. Other input parameters, notably convective heat transfer coefficient, are measured values. Model predictions of the effects of flow rate and oxygen concentration on burning rate and pressure drop are compared with experiment. Reasonable agreement is found for these overall behavior parameters.