Lentil Sorter

1
Lentil Sorter

• Green Team
• Section B

2
Critical Issues

• Technical Feasibility
• Separate lentils from chaff, stones, and other
  foreign material
• Increase capacity
• Market Feasibility
• What is the market positioning?

3
Technical Development 1st Design

• Problems
• Capacity of 36lb/hr
• Difficult to scale up Industrial cyclones only
  800 lbs/hr
• No easy mechanism to separate all 3 major
  constituents (i.e. requires 2-step process)

4
Technical Development 2nd Design

• Problems
• Difficulty separating lentils and chaff
  accurately
• Some lentils get stuck at bottom of PVC tube
• Not perfect, but more promising.

5
Technical Development 3rd Design

• Two concentric screens inside cylinder
• Inner screen has larger holes and
  vibrates/rotates
• No air flow required
• Separates 3 components in 1 step
• Capacity of 100 lb/min

stones
lentils
Chaff
6
Market Feasibility
Pays farmer 11/lb for 93 bushels
Sell 100 bushels w/ 7 foreign material
Market
Elevator
Farmer
Clean, package sell lentils at 14 /lb
Rough clean first Sell 100 bushels w/ 3
foreign material
Pays farmer 12/lb for 97 bushels
7
Market Feasibility
Elevator
Market
Farmer
Sell product to farmers as rough cleaning device
Sell products to elevator
Eliminate elevator

• Trend of growing farm size, commercially operated
• On-farm cleaning viewed as a hassle given high
  throughput

• Need very high capacity
• Farmer must operate machine
• Farmer must develop new marketing relationships

• Already competitive industry
• Need very high capacity