Lentil Sorter Green Team Section B

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

Technical Development: 1 st 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)

Technical Development: 2 nd Design Problems: – Difficulty separating lentils and chaff accurately – Some lentils get stuck at bottom of PVC tube – Not perfect, but more promising….

Technical Development: 3 rd 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 Chaff lentils stones

Market Feasibility Farmer Sell 100 bushels w/ 7% foreign material Pays farmer 11¢/lb for 93 bushels Clean, package & sell lentils at 14 ¢/lb Market Rough clean first; Sell 100 bushels w/ 3% foreign material Pays farmer 12¢/lb for 97 bushels Elevator

Market Feasibility Farmer Market Elevator Sell products to elevator Eliminate elevator Sell product to farmers as rough cleaning device Already competitive industry Need very high capacity Farmer must operate machine Farmer must develop new marketing relationships Trend of growing farm size, commercially operated On-farm cleaning viewed as a hassle given high throughput