A pore-scale reconstruction-based approach to analyze the tobacco-containing segment in electrically heated cigarettes

A new pore-scale reconstruction method based on image processing and automated modeling was proposed in this paper to investigate the electrically heated cigarettes (EHC) porous tobacco-containing segment pyrolysis. First, the two-dimensional images of the microscope were binarized, noise filtered, and boundaries identified to form numerous two-dimensional polygons that describe the skeleton of porous media. Then, three-dimensional (3D) entities were generated through an automated modeling program. The model must be procedurally cleaned up geometrically for successful mesh generation. Second, the fluid flow, heat transfer, latent heat release, and chemical reaction heat in the actual pyrolysis process were considered in numerical simulation. The Arrhenius equation based on experimental data was used to describe the reaction process when chemical equations are challenging to determine. The simulation's pressure losses and component releases were validated with experimental data. The results show that the model reconstructed from the pore structure can accurately describe the flow, heat transfer, and component release in EHC and can completely describe the detailed information of the flow and temperature fields within the pore structure. The major components in EHC all dropped below 50% after ten smoking cycles. Glycerol in EHC near the heat generator is released rapidly to 0 at the beginning of the working process.