Analysis of Breakable Capsules for Cigarette Filter by Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

Breakable capsule for cigarette filter was analyzed by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS), respectively. A total of twenty-seven different batches of three types of breakable capsules, including fresh sweet, honey sweet and peppermint, were investigated and their near-infrared spectra were collected. Classification model of three types of breakable capsule was established by the soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA) with near-infrared spectra. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was used to evaluate the consistency of breakable capsule of the same type and different batches. Simultaneously, main volatile and semi-volatile components in the three types of breakable capsules were analyzed by GC/MS. The results showed that the main volatile and semi-volatile components of breakable capsules were different with different flavor types. NIRS could effectively identify the breakable capsule with different color wall materials. The established SIMCA model could successfully separate three types of breakable capsules, and the classifying accuracy of fresh sweet, honey sweet and peppermint breakable capsules was above 90%. At the same time, LDA models could separate different batches within each type of breakable capsule very well. NIRS was simple to operate and provided a novel, rapid, high-accuracy and nondestructive method for analysis of different types of breakable capsules.