Variations of volatile aroma components during concentrating process of reconstituted tobacco production

In order to study the variations of volatile aroma components during the concentrating process of reconstituted tobacco production, volatile aroma components were extracted by simultaneous distillation and extraction (SDE) method. A total of 234 components were separated by gas chromatography (GC) and identified by time of flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS). The results showed that:1) The average loss of the total volatile components during concentrating was about 30%, in which the contents of carboxylic acid esters, nicotine and neophytadiene were reduced by about 71.32%, 73.15% and 54.46%, respectively. Meanwhile, the concentrating process was accompanied by the generation of some new aroma components. 2) About 32% of volatile aroma components were transferred from extract solution to concentrated evaporation condensate, in which the transfer amounts of alcohols, fatty acid esters, alkanes and neophytadiene were 50.67%, 54.31%, 62.55%, and 63.25% respectively. 3) The content of volatile aroma components in white water was negligible, while nicotine content at 7.93 g per ton of white water.