Volatile components extracted from tobacco extracts by spinning cone column distillation technology

To investigate the effects of spinning cone column (SCC) distillation technology on the extracted volatile components from tobacco extracts, the volatile components from tobacco extracts were obtained by SCC distillation technology and the extraction parameters were optimized by an orthogonal test. The chemical differences of volatile components between SCC distillation technology and the traditional extraction methods were compared and analyzed by GC-MS combined with chemometrics. The results showed that: 1) The optimal SCC distillation efficacy to obtain volatile components from tobacco extracts were obtained with a tower efficiency of 8%, a raw material feed rate of 500 L/h, and a material-liquid ratio of 1∶2. 2) The mass fractions of carotenoid degradation products in the tobacco volatile fractions obtained by the SCC distillation technology were much higher than those obtained by the traditional extraction methods, while the mass fractions of browning reaction products were the opposite. 3) The results of principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) showed that there were significant differences in the volatile components obtained by SCC distillation technology and the traditional extraction methods. A total of 40 differential volatile components were screened by OPLS-DA, among which the differential volatile components obtained by the SCC distillation technology were dominated by carotenoid degradation products, whereas the differential volatile components obtained by the traditional methods were dominated by browning reaction products. The results of this study provide insights to refine the processing of tobacco extracts and the development of high-quality tobacco-derived flavors.