Study on pore characteristics of cigarette porous carriers with the CT method

Porous carrier materials are widely used in the fields of drug delivery, perfume adhesion, environmental treatment, and carrier catalysis, which have network pore structures with characteristics of porosity, pore size distribution, and specific surface area. A cigarette porous carrier (CPC) as an effective carrier of pulmonary therapeutic drugs is conducive to the accurate application of aerosol medications. However, the change of CPC’s processing parameters makes it difficult to maintain the stability of pore distribution and airflow passage resistance uniformity. To obtain the static porosity error model and the real porosity model of porous carriers, microfocus x-ray CT imaging technology was used to generate CPC’s 3D model and the internal porosity analysis and characterization methods of porous carriers with different sections of cigarettes were established. The experimental results show that the width of the filamentary filler unit has great influence on CPC’s static porosity error. When the width of the filamentary filler unit is kept small, the increase in processing temperature can inhibit the static porosity error and improve CPC’s packaging accuracy. In addition, the change trend of CPC’s porosity was opposite to that of airflow passage resistance and both showed a significant negative correlation in the processing temperature range of 175–181 °C. Under the G3 processing parameters, CPC’s porosity is most concentrated between 35% and 50%. The research method and the relationship between the change trend of porosity and airflow passage resistance obtained in this paper provide a theoretical basis for the design and manufacture of high-performance CPCs.