Method for electrostatically separating broken shells from beans, has two pairs of oppositely charged electrodes through which mixture is passed and separating receptacle

摘要

The mixture of beans and broken shells (5) is moistened and fed into a hopper (4) and the a vibrating conveyor (6) having positively charged and earthed electrodes (7,8) before falling through an electric field between further electrodes (9,10). The moisture absorbent shell particles (16) are not electrically charged and fall freely into a one part of a receptacle (13), whilst the charged beans (15) are deflected into another part of the receptacle, separated by a wall (12).