The oxidised dhool is conveyed into the dryer where it is dried by way of hot air blown through the tea which becomes suspended in the air (fluidised), so as to give rapid and even drying.
The tea takes about 20 minutes to progress through the dryer. At the same time, the dryer will extract excess fibre (due to stalks in the green leaf) from the dried tea, as the fibre is lighter than the leaf; the particles of fibre are blown into cyclones situated at the top of the dryer.
The moisture content of the tea as it discharges from the dryer is about 1.8%.
We operate the dryer at about 300kgs of made tea output per hour.
The drying process serves to fix the cell fluids onto the leaf material (which will then be freed into the hot water when the tea is infused).