Why Measure?

As tobacco passes through the GLT and Primary Plants it undergoes many procedures to achieve the desired burn and taste characteristics of the final cigarette. Each procedure, whether it be drying, re-moisturising, rolling, cutting or conditioning, has an optimum product moisture level to ensure maximum efficiency of the operation with regards the working of the machinery, reducing wastage and production of quality uniform product ready for the next stage of Production Process.

Sensor

The new MCT 460-T and well known predecessor, the MCT 101-T, are sensors that have been designed specifically to address the requirements of the Tobacco Industry in terms of: variable composition and presentation of the product, the installation environment, and operation/data handling.

The MCT 660, the laboratory or at-line gauge, is a useful compliment to the on-line gauges. It can be used as a reference for the on-line gauges and can in addition to moisture, provide nicotine and sugar measurements on milled tobacco.

Accessories

The Tobacco gauge incorporates as standard an air or water cooling panel within the base of a cast aluminium enclosure, and a temperature sensor that monitors the internal temperature of the gauge. A vortex cooler and product loss sensors are also available.

Gauge outputs, Operator Interface & Display

The MCT 360-T is available with or without a local operator interface or display as all the processing is carried out within the sensor head and the measurement is output via 4-20mA, 0-10V, RS232, RS485 or any bus. Installation time and effort is minimised with the absence of a local interface, but should samples be collected for cross checks an OI is useful in the event, one could be simply plugged into the gauge at the sampling location.

The Measurement

PSC recognizes that a universal no-compromise tobacco calibration, although desirable isn`t feasible, the number and variety of samples required for such a calibration precludes the possibility. PSC`s approach is to provide an approximate calibration, or a calibration based on customer samples over the expected moisture range . In addition to measuring moisture content, the MCT 360-T can be configured to measure product temperature.

Typical measurement accuracies lie within +/- 0.1 to 0.3% dependent on sample properties. Generally the higher the moisture, the larger the sample size, and the more variable the particle/sample size distribution, the higher the error is.