Abstract
A collaborative examination of the water determination by azeotropic distillation with benzene has been undertaken on the model system paper plus added water, in order to establish whether this method can be used as a reference method for the water determination in tobacco. It has been found that the accuracy of the method, expressed by the amount of added water recovered by distillation, is excellent and independent of the laboratory conducting the trial. Its precision, measured by the mean standard deviation, is in general lower than 0.05 ml, but may vary considerably between the laboratories.