| 摘要 |
Apparatus for puffing, drying or moisturizing tobacco has a conveyor defining an elongated channel with an inlet and an outlet for particles of tobacco. The conveyor is vibrated so that the particles advance toward the outlet, and the bottom wall of the conveyor has orifices which serve to discharge jets of hot air or steam into the channel in such orientation that the jets of admitted fluid medium are inclined to each other, to the direction of advancement of tobacco particles and/or to the vertical. The orifices receive fluid from a chamber which is provided beneath the bottom wall and is connected to a source of steam or hot air. An advantage of the apparatus is that the exchange of heat and/or moisture between tobacco particles and the fluid is highly satisfactory, as well as that substances which are propelled by jets of fluid toward the top wall of the conveyor are more or less uniformly distributed along the entire top wall so that they are less likely to gather into large cakes which could become separated from the top wall to enter the flow of tobacco particles and to advance therewith to the next processing station. The bottom wall of the conveyor can have an undulate shape with the orifices provided in the flanks of hills which alternate with the valleys of such bottom wall.
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