Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/550313
50 tobaccoasia By Thomas Schmid Before a new tobacco product can be launched, it must have undergone thorough testing for a large number of parameters. These include – but are not restricted to – overall chemical composition, potentially toxic substances created during com- bustion, CO/CO2 levels, particle sizes and masses in smoke or aerosol, puff volume, puff duration, drawing frequency (and related to this, burning rates, i.e. how long one cigarette lasts), and a pleth- ora of others. But even long-established products are routinely tested, not only to ensure product consistency and quality, but also to comply with various governmental regulations. To facilitate all of this, a number of internationally operating manufacturers offer an extensive range of devices the tobacco industry has affectionately come to call "smoking machines". Product samples can be inserted into them, and through sophisticated technology the machine will then simulate the ac- tion of a human smoker. Smoke, aerosol (in e-cig- arettes) or gases are subjected to comprehensive analysis, giving tobacco companies' R&D depart- ments valuable insights. As close as it gets Smoking machines ideally reproduce real-world smoke profiles, can be semi or fully automated depending on user needs, and should be easily ad- justed to a multitude of product-specific smoking regimes. For example, the fully-automated RM200A unit of German company Borgwaldt KC GmbH is designed to efficiently carry out routine smoke analysis under a broad menu of different smok- ing regimes. Another popular Borgwaldt machine is the semi-automated RM20H, which combines routine testing requirements and the flexibility to operate with different trapping systems like elec- trostatic precipitation or cooled Impinger traps as needed for Hoffmann testing and in R&D labs, according to Thomas Schmidt, the company's marketing and business development manager (and no relation to the author). Another German firm, Heinrich Burghart GmbH (a.k.a. Burghart Tabaktechnik), currently offers the Pentagon and the RMB 20 as its two most successful units. The Pentagon is designed Going Up in (Test) Smoke Vitrocell VC10 in action