Browsing by Author "Pathmasiri, M.M.R."

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    An Analytical Approach to Establish Specific Electrical Energy Consumption for Tea Factories in Sri Lanka
    (Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka, 2013) Udayangani, W.A.S.; Gunadasa, H.K.S.G.; Pathmasiri, M.M.R.
    Tea industry is undoubtedly one of the most important industries with a substantial contribution to the national economy in Sri Lanka. Tea industry utilizes energy in the forms of thermal energy and electrical energy for its tea manufacturing process requirements. Analyze values that can be used as standard values for the comparing performance of industries, process, systems or equipments is essential to set the corresponding achievements. Average value, best value and baseline for electrical energy consumption for tea industry is a vital because the specific electricity consumption in terms of kWh per one kilogram of made tea is a good measure of understanding the effectiveness of electricity utilization in the tea industry. This research contributes to calculate the specific electrical energy consumption for tea factories in Sri Lanka because the calculated value of the specific energy consumption between the tea factories has large variation. There are 642 tea factories are operated in Sri Lanka. These tea factories are situated up country, mid country and low country respectively. From those tea factories 50 tea factories are taken as the sample size. From the above sample size about 25 tea factories, data are collected from up country/ mid country tea factories and other 25 tea factories, data collected from low country tea factories. Questionnaire survey was carried out for collecting relevant data from the tea factories and gathered information on monthly and annual made tea production (kg) and monthly and annual electricity consumption (kWh). Specific electrical energy consumption (kWh per kilogram of made tea) was the calculated data. Minitab software system was used to find out the best performance among a group of tea factories. The calculated average value was 0.7856 kWh per one kilogram of made tea for specific electrical energy consumption and it is named as the baseline of specific electrical energy consumption. The best case of the specific electrical energy consumption is 0.4 kWh per one kilogram of made tea. This calculated baseline for the specific electrical energy consumption allows the tea factories to know precisely where their operation ranks in relation to a direct competitor, further allowing it to identify major performance gap that need to be addressed through improved energy efficiency.
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    Development of an Energy Management Plan for Tea Factories in Sri Lanka
    (Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka, 2013) Harischandra, K.K.H.A.; Gunadasa, H.K.S.G.; Pathmasiri, M.M.R.
    Tea production of Sri Lanka has high importance to the Sri Lankan economy and the world market. Tea industry requires energy in different stages of manufacturing process. Energy is the scare resource and efficient energy management is important nationally for the industry as well as the globally from the sustainable resource management. Continuous efforts on improvement in utilization of energy are essential for the survival of an industry and introduction of energy efficiency measures would undoubtedly lead to a significant reduction in energy consumption. The objectives of this study were to preparation of energy management plan for tea factories in Sri Lanka through identification of energy efficiency measures which were introduced to tea factories, find out the areas that require further improvements and already improved areas and to identify factors which affected to adopt energy efficiency measures for tea factories. Questionnaires, Observation were used as primary data collection methods. Existing energy efficiency measures were covered through the questionnaire. Publications, energy audit reports etc. were used as secondary data collection methods. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and chi square test for independents were used to analyze the data. This study revealed that the elevation, type of tea produce, monthly average production and monthly average electricity units were not significantly affected to adopt energy efficiency measures. High investment, technical knowledge, energy audits, energy management policies and green leaf standard are the major factors to adopt energy efficiency measures in tea factories in Sri Lanka.
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    Factors affecting the level of effectiveness of dryers used in Sri Lankan tea manufacturing
    (Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka, 2015) Ruwanka, W.K.T.; Weerawansha, A.N.R.; Withanage, N.S.; Pathmasiri, M.M.R.
    Tea production is basically a drying process of freshly harvested green tea leaves, reducing its moisture content from about 75-83% down to 3%. In black tea manufacturing tea undergoes mainly withering, rolling, fermenting, drying, grading and packaging processing steps. Sri Lanka mainly produces tea by the Orthodox technology. Drying is the most expensive process in the manufacture of tea (http://www.biriz.biz/cay/TeaSector2002). The capital investment on dryers is also the highest among the different processing machines. There are three different types of tea dryers up to now namely ECP (Endless Chain Pressure), FBD (Fluidized Bed Dryer) and combination dryers. ECP dryer has been used in tea industry since 1907 and fluidized bed dryer was first developed for tea in Sri Lanka in 1974 (Temple S.J., 2000). Tea dryers have its defined output as rated output. But normally dryer machines give lower output (actual output) than rated output. There may be several reasons affecting for dryer output deviation from rated output. Ultimately this would lead to poor production and high cost of production to the tea factories. Main objective is to find out the factors affecting for deviation of actual dryer output from rated dryer output in different types of tea dryers. Materials and Methodology Effectiveness of three types of tea dryers was taken as dependent variable. Effectiveness of tea dryers can be measured as the ratio between actual output and rated output. It will be finally taken as a percentage value. As independent variables four factors have been selected as moisture content of withered leaves (wither percentage %), age of three types of dryers (Years), moisture of firewood used for drying (firewood moisture) and dhool percentage taken after roll breaking process (first, second and third dhool percentage). The sampling frame was 37 tea dryers representing three manufacturing regions in Sri Lanka (Up country, Mid country and Low country). There were 17 ECP dryers, 15 FBD dryers and 5 combination dryers in the sample. The data were collected for recent three months time period and average values were taken finally. For the analysis descriptive, correlation and simple linear regression was used. Results and Discussion According to descriptive statistics mean effectiveness of ECP, FBD and combination dryers were 85.88%, 89.83%, 91.53% respectively.
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    Firewood energy utilization in different dryers used in Tea processing
    (Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka, 2015) Chathurangi, N.H.K.; Withanage, N.S.; Pathmasiri, M.M.R.
    Tea industry is one of the most key important drives in Sri Lankan economy. Sri Lanka Sustainable Energy Authority is one of the important government institutions for energy management and enhancing awareness and creating technical capacity on energy conservation in Sri Lanka. Tea industry utilizes both electrical and thermal energy for its processing. The tea factories pre- dominantly use fuel wood to meet their thermal energy needs, in the drying process, which is the major transformation process in the tea industry. The lack of researchers on the energy utilization of different dryers used in Sri Lankan tea industry and different types of dryers are used depending on the production capacity of the tea factory. The objectives of the research are to find out firewood energy utilization of different dryers and performance of different dryers in Sri Lanka. Materials and methodology The research was carried out to Sustainable Energy Authority during the period from April to August 2014. Specific thermal energy utilization (MJ/kg) was used to measure the level of firewood consumption for dryers and it was tested for different dryers, location and combustion technology. Two factor factorial design was implemented as the experimental design where dryer type and combustion technology were taken in to consideration .There are three types of dryer commonly used in tea drying such as, conventional endless chain pressure type dryer (ECP), Fluidized bed drier (FBD), and combination drier which works on a combination of ECP and FBD principles .There are two types of combustion technologies used for tea drying such as, Boilers and furnace. Primary data were collected from factory officers by providing the structural questionnaires. Secondary data were also collected from the annual reports of Sri Lanka Sustainable Energy Authority and factory reports of different tea factories. Collected sample was surveyed based on the factory records during 2012 to 2013 to gather necessary information. Factory observations were also was carried out to confirm the accuracy of data that were collected by the interviews of factory officers and Factory managers. Minitab 16 Statistical Software was used for both descriptive and interferential statistics. ANOVA General linear model was used to analyze the variance of dryer output in relation to dryer types and combustion technology. Collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistical methods. Descriptive statistics were graphical explained with using of Microsoft Excel and Minitab software. Pearson correlation was used to determine the association of consumption of firewood and total production. The relationship of firewood consumption and total production were analyzed by using simple regression technique. Results and Discussion According to descriptive statistics, firewood Energy Source was highly used in tea processing. The result revealed that, 19% firewood and saw dust, 8% firewood and furnace oil, only 3% of firewood and coconut shell was also used. Jungle wood was highly used in tea processing. The results showed that 36% rubber firewood and only 19% rubber and jungle wood were also reported. The low country and mid country tea factories use only firewood and saw dust. But up country tea factories use different types of energy sources. Up country tea factories mainly use Fluidized Bed dryers and mid country and low country highly use Endless Chain Pressure dryers. Low country and up country mainly trended in small scale production and mid country highly trended in large scale production. In mid country, it is available large, medium and low price firewood. But in up country and low country, it is available only large and medium price fire wood. The Endless Chain Pressure dryer was the highly used dryer type.it was revealed that, 28% of Fluidized Bed dryers and only 25% of combination dryers were also used in tea processing. Endless Chain Pressure dryers had the dryer capacity of 180-280 kg/hr, Fluidized Bed dryers had 280-500 kg/hr and Combination dryers had 250-450 kg/hr capacity. Endless Chain pressure Dryers are easy to be maintained than others. Endless Chain Pressure dryers were mainly used in small scale production, Fluidized Bed dryer and Combination dryers were highly used in large scale production in tea factories. The furnace combustion technology was highly used in tea processing. 61% furnace and only 39 % of boilers were reported. Majority of tea factories in small scale production use furnace and tea factories in large scale production use boilers. Majority of low country and mid country tea factories use furnaces and up country tea factories use boilers and prominently Endless Chain Pressure dryers utilize the energy of furnace and Fluidized Bed dryers use the energy of boilers. When consider the Regression output, P value 0.000 of the model suggests that at 5% significant level, firewood consumption is significant in relation to the dryer made tea production. R – Square was recorded as 49.3 % and it implies that 49.3% of the firewood consumption is explained by the made tea while the 50.7% is explained by unexplained variables.