A Sri Lankan inventor and entrepreneur has designed a special automation system for feeding paddy husks to tobacco curing barns, according to a story in the Daily News.
The inventor, H. J. Weerasinghe, of Dambulla, is a supplier of cured tobacco to Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC).
Weerasinghe said that traditionally paddy husk was fed manually to the barn and that because of the imprecise nature of this operation the tobacco could become overheated.
Because of this, Weerasinghe added, he had designed a system that automatically applied the paddy husk so as to heat the tobacco to the required temperature.
The new system is said to minimize environmental pollution. It generates no paddy-husk ash that has to be disposed of, though a liquid, which was not specified in the report, is left behind.
The automatic barn is said to have a greater daily capacity than manual barns have.
Weerasinghe said he was ready to market the system at a price of about Rs65,000.
Meanwhile, Michael Koest, CTC’s CEO and MD, said the company had been amazed with the invention and would help it to be marketed overseas where traditional methods were used to cure tobacco.
CTC has operated in Sri Lanka for more than 100 years, during which time it has become an integral part of the country’s agriculture and business sectors.
The company’s involvement in the agricultural sector extends over 70 years with tobacco growing operations having started in the 1950s.