Abstract: In order to remove the ash built up on the inside wall of the heat exchanger tubes in the combustion chamber of HDT tobacco dryer and promote the heat transfer efficiency, a cleaning device was designed. The device mainly consists of a tube cleaning unit, a deflector cleaning unit, an air compressor and an industrial vacuum cleaner. The flexible grinding head for cleaning the tube and the flexible roller brush for cleaning the deflector are driven by an air motor (rated speed of 4 500 r/min) and an electric motor (rated speed of 1 351 r/min) , respectively; and the air motor is driven by compressed air of 0.3 MPa from the air compressor. The removed ash is collected by the industrial vacuum cleaner. The designed cleaning device was tested on the HDT-FX3000 tobacco dryer at Liuzhou Cigarette Factory. The results showed that the average time for cleaning the heat exchanger was reduced from 172 to 63 min, the natural gas consumption for drying a batch of tobacco was reduced from 86.49 m³ to 82.19 m³, and the average power consumption of the combustion chamber was reduced by 15.9%. This device is helpful for promoting the heat transfer efficiency of HDT tobacco dryer and reducing energy consumption in production.