In this presentation, Paweł Woźnicki, Research & Development Specialist at ChemNovatic, explains the scientific process of removing aroma compounds from nicotine extract. The talk highlights ChemNovatic’s commitment to product purity and technological innovation through their proprietary STC manufacturing standard.
Woźnicki discusses:
- advanced purification methods for nicotine;
- strategies for identifying and reducing trace impurities;
- analytical techniques that ensure the highest product quality;
- the importance of maintaining strict production standards in the nicotine industry.
This session offers an in-depth look into modern purification technologies and showcases how science drives product safety and consistency in nicotine manufacturing.
Transcription:
00:06 - 00:40
[Karin Jacobson]
And we then move on to our next speaker, who is Paweł Woźnicki, a research and development specialist at ChemNovatic. He focuses on development and optimization of technological processes in nicotine industry. His work involves improving purification methods, analyzing and reducing trace impurities in nicotine, and advancing analytical techniques to enhance the highest product quality. And the title of his talk is Removing Aroma Compounds from Nicotine Extract.
00:51 - 06:03
[Video]
Removing aroma compounds from nicotine extract. At ChemNovatic, we follow our own strict manufacturing standard, STC. The STC nicotine manufacturing standard is the realization of ChemNovatic's vision for the highest standards in nicotine manufacturing. It covers quality, sustainability, traceability, and compliance. Today, we will focus on one particular aspect of this standard, quality. Specifically, we will look at the aspect of removing the aroma compounds found in tobacco leaves that have the most negative impact on the odor of pure nicotine. Learn how nicotine is purified from them in a controlled, multi-stage process. Let's start our journey at the beginning. Nicotine is extracted from tobacco leaves. The most commonly used variety is Nicotiana tobacco. But tobacco isn't just nicotine. It contains many classes of chemical compounds, including carbohydrates, proteins and amino acids, phenolics, inorganics, terpenoids and norsoprenoids, organic bases, carboxylic acids, and pigments. Today we will focus on organic bases which consist of alkaloids and aroma compounds, pyridines and pyrazines. The total content of alkaloids is around 3-9% of organic bases and nicotine is accounting for approximately 90-95% of them. It means that the total content of nicotine in the tobacco leaf is around 2-8%. The other compounds of organic bases are pyridines and pyrazines, two groups of aroma compounds. Removing these compounds is crucial for obtaining odorless pure nicotine. The removal of unwanted odor-impacting compounds takes place at different stages of the nicotine manufacturing process, from pretreatment, which includes steps such as drying, shredding, and softening leaf structure to prepare the material for further processing, through extraction and distillation. Each stage plays a critical role and must be carefully designed and executed to ensure the production of pure, odorless nicotine with purity up to 99.99%. Throughout the carefully designed nicotine manufacturing process, various groups of compounds are removed. We would like to highlight one particularly undesirable group that poses the greatest challenge in terms of removal, aroma compounds, pyridines and pyrazines. Let's talk about these two groups of aroma compounds. How do pyrazines and pyridines are formed? When tobacco is cured, a wide range of chemical transformations take place. Large molecules break down into smaller ones, which then react to form aroma compounds. Let's take a closer look at this process. Cellulose and starch break down into simpler sugars like glucose. These sugars degrade further into carbonyl compounds. Proteins, on the other hand, are broken down into amino acids and ammonia. When carbonyl compounds react with amino acids and ammonia, they produce two groups of aroma compounds, pyrazines and pyridines. Additionally, pyridines are also formed through the breakdown of tobacco alkaloids. Pyrazines and pyridines are particularly undesirable in pure nicotine, as they can generate strong and unpleasant odors. often described as harsh, burnt, or even fishy. That's why at ChemNovatic, we place great emphasis on optimizing every stage of the manufacturing process to ensure exceptionally pure nicotine, completely free from aroma compounds. Let's break down why aroma compounds need to be removed from nicotine extract. To make nicotine odorless, to reduce toxicity, to ensure the stability of the final product, to eliminate unwanted taste, Now let's take a closer look at why removing pyridines and pyrazines from nicotine extract is so challenging. Curing and pretreatment of tobacco leaves have a significant impact on the levels of these compounds in the nicotine extract. By the time distillation begins, pyridines and pyrazines are already present only in trace amounts, but distillation is the key step to remove them. Because they are chemically similar to nicotine, it's hard to separate them earlier in the process. Even though they have lower boiling points than nicotine, their very low concentration means they don't form a separate fraction during distillation. Despite these challenges, we have developed a process that allows us to successfully remove these compounds and achieve nicotine with a purity of up to 99.99%. Producing high-quality nicotine is a complex and precise process. Extraction and distillation aren't just about technology. They require deep chemical expertise that enables designing and implementing the optimal manufacturing process. The outcome is nicotine of exceptional purity, colorless, odorless and meeting the strictest quality standards. All of this is made possible thanks to the STC nicotine manufacturing standard, a framework that ensures consistency, safety and responsibility at every step of production.
06:06 - 06:11
[Karin Jacobson]
Pavel, I would like to start by handing the word to you for any comments.
06:13 - 07:59
[Paweł Woźnicki]
So The reason why we wanted to draw your attention this year to aroma compounds is because over the years we've noticed that there are various kinds of odors in nicotine which are undesirable, such as fishy odors or earthy kind of notes. And these odors come from compounds which are very active when it comes to being able to smell them. at a very low concentration. So you can have nicotine of very high purity, like 99% or higher, and you still get nicotine which is poor when it comes to the organoleptic properties of nicotine. So the problem is that you can have a highly optimized distillation process when it comes to obtaining nicotine of high purity when you test it through gas chromatography, for example. But these compounds, which are responsible for the undesirable others, they are present at such low concentrations that you cannot see them. So we had to put a lot of work to work out methods to remove these compounds in such a way that both the purity of nicotine from the analytical point of view was good, and also to ensure that the organoleptic qualities are also good for the consumer. Thank you.
07:59 - 08:03
[Karin Jacobson]
Thank you, Pavel. Do we have any questions from the audience?
08:04 - 08:48
[Attendee]
Yes. I'm Anna, a technician from Italy. And I would like to ask, how did you manage to build the library that is needed to identify these compounds? I mean, they can be influenced by a number, an enormous number of variable elements such as the weather of the year of the harvesting, the tobacco leaves, the sun, the moment of harvesting and so on. So how did you manage to build a library of such a complex amount of compounds that can be present in such a different level year by year and so on?
08:49 - 09:16
[Paweł Woźnicki]
Thank you. Over the years, we've worked with a lot of different extracts from different suppliers. And we don't really have a library when it comes to... Because you're asking which conditions throughout the whole process influence the levels of particle compounds. Do I understand correctly?
09:17 - 09:33
[Attendee]
No, my question was if you... Oh, thank you. If you need to take off some compounds, you need to identify all of them. And they can be so many that I think it can be quite challenging to identify all of them. That is my question.
09:34 - 10:41
[Paweł Woźnicki]
OK, so basically we worked out such extraction and concentrating methods to make these compounds visible, to make them so that they are high enough levels in the sample that we can see them through GC-MS, for example, or HPL-CMS. And then when you have a high enough concentration, you can identify them through fragmentation, like from mass spectra. Is that what you're asking? Yes. So when you have pure nicotine, like I said, you cannot see them when you just run an analysis on pure nicotine. You have to do some work in the lab to concentrate these impurities, to separate them from nicotine, to see them on the analysis results.
10:44 - 10:46
[Karin Jacobson]
Thank you. Do we have any more questions?
10:51 - 11:40
[Inna Maslenchuk]
Yes. from Ukraine. Thank you very much for your presentation. It's really insightful. I just have a really probably provocative question for you, and it's not around the science. More political, OK, this idea of extracting the aroma compounds, sounds really healthy and sounds really great for the consumers but at the same time afterwards the manufacturers they are eating the flavors, right? So it's not healthy for the consumers but of course I understand that according to the commercial some goals it's a more adherence for consumers to use the different products but still what's the point beyond the commercial reasons?
11:42 - 11:45
[Paweł Woźnicki]
You're asking what's the point of removing these compounds?
11:46 - 11:57
[Inna Maslenchuk]
No, adding the flavors. Removing the compounds is a healthier way for the products, tobacco products, but afterward the manufacturer, they're adding the flavors.
11:57 - 13:49
[Paweł Woźnicki]
Yes, yes, that's true. Well, one aspect is that we have to focus... We have to focus on making regulations in such a way that the compounds, the aromatic compounds that are added to the products that the consumer use are as healthy as possible. Maybe healthy is not a good word. we use nicotine in different products, right? So for some products, there are no added aromatic compounds, right? So the point of removing these compounds is to control the taste in such a way that the consumer can, if they choose, for example, like a strawberry aroma, they have as clean, organoleptic sensations as possible. Yeah, I mean, it is true that the aromatic compounds that are used in nicotine products, they have an effect on health for sure. And yeah, I mean, this is, this is a, Difficult topic, because on one hand, the consumer wants different tastes, right? And this is a crucial part of their experience when they use the products. On the other hand, we have to ensure that we do not use the most dangerous compounds that are responsible for taste.
13:53 - 14:04
[Karin Jacobson]
Thank you. We have time for one more question, and I know that there was one here. No. Just answer the same question that I had. Okay. Yes, then we can do one final question here. Thank you.
14:06 - 15:24
[George Cassels-Smith]
Okay. George again from the United States, and we're a contract manufacturer of finished e-juices. It's a white label. We do see that even very high purity nicotine has some potential off notes. And I'm talking about 99.8 or above, or even 99.9. Occasionally, some elements in there give those fishy notes or earthy notes. And it's not the best blank screen to have flavor. So we evaluate the nicotine before we actually add the flavoring to it and sometimes reject a product. a lot of it because of taste. And we do add the flavorings, but I will tell you that the flavorings are not as dangerous as one would think, and we try and work with inside a list of accepted ingredients at certain levels that we know are not adding to the overall toxicity of the product. How do you remove some of these ingredients at such low levels to make that neutral palate or taste?
15:26 - 15:52
[Paweł Woźnicki]
Yes. I mean, that's the main point of removing these compounds, so that you have nicotine, which is as odorless as possible, so that you can make your product with a specific aroma with as clean sensations for the consumers. So we removed them for this specific reason.
15:56 - 15:58
[Karin Jacobson]
Thank you, Pavel, and thank you for the questions.