Summary

Tea Industry is one of the major export- oriented food processing industries in Sri Lanka. Ceylon tea, which is well known for its quality is produced in about 710 tea factories in the country. Out of these, 450 tea factories produce special Orthodox tea grades of long leafy & wiry type particles. This amounts to over 70% of the total annual made tea production of the country. Separation of this type of leafy and wiry teas into different grades is a tedious process in tea manufacture and that it takes several days to complete. The Michie Sifters coupled with different size meshes are used for sorting the long leafy & wiry type tea into different grades maintaining size variation to a minimum. Clogging of tea particles in the mesh occurs in the Michie Sifter and as a result the sorting process is greatly affected. Therefore, workers are employed for each sorting machine to remove the tea particles clogging the mesh with a piece of wood at regular intervals. Sorting tea in this manner results in breaking and greying of tea particles. Tea grades with broken and greyed tea particles lose their appearance and fetch lower prices compared to that with even size black tea. Further, regular cleaning leads to sagging of meshes and results in inefficient sorting of teas. Cost of sorting is also high due to deployment of workers for cleaning of meshes etc.

Therefore, the sorting machine needs to be improved with a mechanism to automatically remove the clogging tea particles during sorting with a view to improve efficiency of sorting and to avoid breaking and greying of tea particles by manual cleaning of meshes. The Tea Research Institute has developed a Self-Cleaning mechanism for the sorting machine, Michie Sifter to continuously remove the clogging tea particles during sorting. This improved efficiency of sorting and avoided breaking of tea particles by manual cleaning of meshes.

In Tea factories, four numbers of Michie Sifters having different size meshes are used in completing the sorting process. In this project one single machine incorporated with all the meshes will be designed and developed, since manual cleaning of clogging particles on the mesh could be avoided with the use of the Self-Cleaning mechanism.

Objectives

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Major Equipment Facilitated by Grant

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