Ongoing efforts to develop Chinese-style cigarette products over recent years have concentrated on creating unconventional filter tips displaying new functions that are intended to significantly lower the content of tar and other harmful substances in cigarette smoke.
After the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) explicitly set the target of developing Chinese-style cigarettes in 2003, how to develop new cigarette products "that will be highly aromatic, that will have a lower tar and that will be less harmful" has become a question that all Chinese tobacco manufacturers need to answer definitively.
![]()
In reality, there are multiple approaches to solving this question, such as the development of new varieties of leaf tobacco capable of generating lower tar, the adoption of more advanced leaf tobacco processing technologies and the use of various online and offline cut tobacco and cut stems expansion technologies, for example.
Accordingly, the development of new filter tips to lower tar content and other harmful substances has become a major approach adopted in the development of new cigarette products.
Meeting requirments
Presently, filter tips used are mostly general acetate fiber filter rods with a uniform structure, which far from meet the related requirement for the production of Chinese-style cigarettes. Therefore, all big manufacturing enterprises have one after another invested heavily in the development of new-function filter tips to further lower the content of tar and other harmful substances in their cigarette products.
On May 7, 2008, the National Intellectual Property Rights Office made public an invention patent application filed by Hongta Group in southwest China's tobacco-producing Yunnan province - an application for the patent of a non-conventional type of filter tip and the method of its preparation. This type of filter tip is made from a high dtex/ktex specification of acetate fiber. Each has four or five small-bore filter rods inside, which can be made from the 8.8dtex/3.3ktex or 6.6dtex/1.88ktex specification of acetate fiber. More specifically, each of the small-bore filter rods is separately made with the 3,000CU, 6,000CU, 8,000CU and 10,000CU high-porosity plug wrap paper, and each is prepared for cigarettes measuring 120mm, 90mm, 132mm or 144mm in length, with an equal circumference of 10mm to 15mm. The four or five small-bore filter rods jointly make up a filter tip with a circumference of 24mm to 24.5mm.
A major advantage gained in this process is that with a changed internal structure, it is capable of simultaneously playing the functions of filtering and inner dilution when the mainstream smoke passes through it. The process of filtering is accomplished by the small-bore acetate fiber filter rods in the filter tip. Meanwhile, the process of inner dilution is realized when the air in the mainstream of smoke passes through the gaps among the small-bore filter rods. The processes of filtering and inner dilution are carried out simultaneously in the filter tip.
It was reported that compared with conventional cigarette filter tips, the new one is capable of increasing the efficiency of filtering by 20% to 40% and reducing the content of volatile and semi-volatile harmful substances in the gaseous phase of mainstream smoke by 20% to 40% under identical conditions, while retaining the aesthetic quality of cigarettes. Only simple production technologies are involved in the manufacture of the unique filter structure.
Biologically impregnated
This is only one typical example of achievements made by China's tobacco industry in the development of new-function filter tips.
![]()
Internationally, the Greeks have succeeded in developing a type of hemoglobin-impregnated activated carbon filter tip. According to a US patent report, this type of tip is capable of reducing the content of many varieties of harmful substances in cigarette smoke. This foreign patent has greatly inspired Sichuan-Chongqing Regional China Tobacco Industry Corporation (SCRCTIC), the operator of the tobacco industries in southwest China's Sichuan Province and its neighboring Chongqing City. Through many years of painstaking experimentation, a research taskforce of SCRCTIC has succeeded in extracting hemoglobin from fresh animal blood before segregating a core ingredient from it, known as porphyrin. Corporate technicians have also extracted many types of biologically active materials with which to make compound biochemical preparations which are the added to filter tips using tea leaves as a carrier. Both China Academy of Sciences and Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute in north China's Henan Province have issued formal test reports to prove that a filter tip reinforced with such preparations is capable of reducing the content of more than 10 harmful substances in four categories in cigarette smoke, mostly all carcinogens, five of which are highly carcinogenic.
So far, such preparations have been extensively used in the production of cigarette products of the Pride brand family, including general Heavenly Pride, Heavenly Pride (Golden), Heavenly Pride (Red), National Treasure Pride (Purple), National Treasure Pride (Soft) and Pride (Hard Sunshine), and in Longfengchengxiang (Celebrative Precious Class) brand cigarettes. As soon as they open the filter tip of any cigarette of these specifications, consumers can see some dark-colored grains inside, which are actually compound harm-reducing preparations attached to shreds of tealeaves. SCRCTIC has managed to develop a series of technologies intended to strictly control the use of additives in cigarettes to within the scope of fluctuations permitted to ensure the harm-reductive effect in all cigarette products.
Independent property rights
All regional China Tobacco Industry Corporations (CTIC) across the country have developed other forms of new-function filter tips to which they independently hold intellectual property rights, and they are anxious to continue developing technologies for lowering tar content and other harmful substances. They all hope that their products will become the consumer-preferred industry standard.
![]()
Yanji Cigarette Factory of Jilin Provincial CTIC in northeast China's Jilin province has developed a natural herbal extract as the aromatizer to its 5mg Mount Changbaishan (Oriental Verve) brand cigarettes with a highly active HCF filter tip.
Hongta Group has developed a unique type of new-function filter tip for its top new product Mount Hongtashan (Great Classics) brand cigarettes. Because this cigarette brand is relatively thick, filter tips with a diameter of 8.6mm have to be used on them. This filter size is larger than usual, and it was extremely difficult to develop. After repeated tests, researchers have succeeded in solving the problem of draw resistance and of moisturizing the smole by adding natural herbal extracts. Meanwhile, they have managed to extend the length of the filter tip by 6mm to filter harmful substances in cigarette smoke highly efficiently.
Guangxi Regional CTIC in southwest China's Guangxi Region has also developed a unique type of filter tip for its Zhenlong Shengshi (The Genuine Dragon and the Flourishing Age) brand of cigarettes. It not only absorbs such harmful substances as tar, nicotine and benzopyrene in smoke from burning cigarettes in large quantities, it is also capable of retaining harmful substances, significantly reducing the harm to human health, reducing the content of odors, making cigarette smoke less stimulative and improving its taste.
Consumer choice
To sum up, the tobacco industry of China is striving to develop technologies for reducing tar content and other harmful substances in cigarette smoke through the development of unique types of new-function filter tips attempting to erect barriers against the harm causable by smoking to human health. It is probable that in the near future the tobacco industry will be able to develop more and more Chinese-style cigarette products "that are highly aromatic, and that have a lower content of tar and other harmful substances" for consumers to choose from. Enditem
