Method of doing away with the nicotine and the methylalcohol when smoking tobacco

Application filed December 12, 1928, Serial No. 325,552, and in Germany June 23, 1927.

When smoking tobacco, either loosely in pipes or in the form of cigars and cigarettes, there arise, besides aromatic smoke and vapors, also other vapors which condense at least partly and contain nicotine, as well as ® methylalcohol. These latter substances affect the taste in a disagreeable and detrimental manner. Nicotine, for instance, forms, in chemical relation, bases which produce a very disagreeable smell, whereby the ¹⁰ pleasure otherwise to be had is greatly impaired; besides, said bases are injurious to health.

Proposals have already been made to intercept the said injurious substances, espe¹⁵ cially to suck up the condensate, for instance by means of insertions in the pipes, and it has also been proposed to mix the tobacco with certain counter-acting substances, for instance such containing silicic acid (kiesel⁰ guhr, infusorial earth, and the like), or to conduct the vapors over ferric chloride, but none of these means has proved successful.

On examining the effect of an addition of _2g ferric chloride or of infusorial earth, it is found, that only quite immaterial amounts of nicotine and of methylalcohol are absorbed in liquid state. This slight, effect which the experienced smoker perceives at ₃₀ once can be rendered visible by putting, for ^υ instance, a cigarette into a glass pipe and sucking the smoke by means of a pump through an absorption bottle containing water, and subjecting this latter than to a 35 stalagmometric examination.

Examinations of this kind and of otherkinds have led me to the discovery that it is possible to do away actually completely with the noxious substances mentioned, irrespec40 five of whether they are in the form of vapors or of condensates, and that it is at the same time also possible to improve the taste of the tobacco very materially (owing to the removal of the said substances) by con45 ducting the tobacco smoke over or through small amounts of acid (synthetically produced) silica gel as used for the absorption of steam. If, for instance, a few grains of this substance are put into a cigarette or ¢9 cigar holder it will be observed that they as sume during the smoking a brown, even deeply, dark-brown color, according to the contents of nicotine in the respective tobacco.

The above-mentioned stalagmometric investigations as to the effect of kieselguhr and to the effect of silica gel have been carried ⁶⁶out with the aid of the arrangement and combination of parts shown in the accompanying drawings partly in side-view and partly in vertical section. In this figure l^a „ denotes a right-angled tube, the horizontal branch of which is so enlarged as to be able to receive a cigarette. 1 denotes the chamber into which the burning end of the cigarette is inserted. 2 is an absorption vessel 65 which is closed by a stopper 2^a through which extend the vertical leg of said tube l^a, as well as one of the vertical legs of a tube 3 which forms an inverted U. The vessel had been filled with 5 cm.³ of water. There were ?0 used 5 cigarettes one after the other, that is to say, each thereof ignited and introduced into the chamber 1, it being understood that they all contained the same sort or kind of tobacco. j_B

The other vertical leg of the tube 3 extends, as shown, into a bottle 4 of the Woulfe type, which is connected by a tube 5 with a suction pump not shown. When this pump is in operation, the smoke is sucked through ₈₀the water in the bottle 2. It was found that in a minute from 40 to 50 bubbles passed through the water from the tube l^a to the tube 3. In order to prevent the nicotine from separating in the form of salt, 2/10 gs cm.³ of potash-lye having a strength of 10% had been introduced into the water in the bottle 2.

Three experiments were made, as follows:

In the first case the smoke of the 5 ciga- 90 reties was conducted through the water without the use of an absorption . substance. Thereafter it was ascertained that the water in the bottle 2 had a disagreeable strong smell and its cplor had become yellow. A yellow- 95 brown liquid covered the inner wall of the tube l^a.

In the second experiment 0,2 gram of kieselguhr was introduced into the chamber 1 in front of the burning cigarette end, as at 1. 100

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The smell and the color of the water in the bottle 2 were the same as in the first experiment, and an oily distillate covered the inner, wall of the tube 1*. The color of the kiesel5 guhr had turned into a greyish white which proved that the influence of the kieselguhr upon the smoke as to the intercepting of the noxious substances had been very small.

In the third experiment 0,2 gram of silica io gel were introduced into the chamber 1 (the cigarettes being always of the same sort or kind), and it was afterwards ascertained that the silica gel had assumed a strongly brown color. But the extraordinarily remarkable 15 other result was this that the water in the bottle 2 showed no color or smell whatever. Not a trace of a distillation precipitate could be found in the tube 1\

The hereinafter stated stalagmometric ex20 amination of the water contained in the bottle 2 showed that the alkalized water had prior to the tests a number of drops of 35,2. After the first experiment executed without an absorption substance the drop number was 43,9 25 and after the water had taken up the liquid collected at the wall of the chamber 1 and the tube l^a the number of drops was 47,7. The second experiment carried out with 0,2 gr. kieselguhr yielded a drop number of 43,2, and 30 after the water had taken up the oily distillate the number of drops was 45,5. In the third experiment ir. which 0,2 gr. silica gel had been used in the chamber 1, the number of drops was 35,7.

Thus, the stalagmometric test showed, in correspondence with the results of the other tests, that the influence of the kieselguhr upon the absorption of the distillate is exceedingly small, whereas, counter thereto, if silica gel is 40 _USed even hardly traces of nicotine or of methylalcohol could be detected in the water in the bottle 2.

These tests and their results pro re unquestionably that silica gel surpasses by far the <5 other substances mentioned as a means for depriving the tobacco vapor of its noxious components. ;

The silica gel can be used in the form of a pill inserted into the tobacco pipe or the cigar 50 or cigarette holder, or it may be used in pulverulent state and distributed uniformly in the tobacco, irrespective of whether it is disintegrated tobacco, as in cigarettes, or if the tobacco is in the form of sheets, as in cigars. 55 At all events the silica gel should be so arranged that the entire amount of the smoke can contact with it.

I am showing by Way of example in Fig. 2 a cigarette having a piece of silica gel inserted 00 into its mouth-piece, a denotes the cigarette and a¹ its mouth-piece in which quite a small store of/silica gel in the form of grains is housed. The amount is very small, viz, 0.025 gr. Z> denotes these grains. These latter can 65 contact directly with the tobacco, as in the figure, or may be embedded in a pad of wadding or the like.