Abstract:
In order to reduce the cost of tobacco flue-curing, an 8-tunnel 30 m continuous flue-curing barn was developed on the basis of stepping flue-curing barn. The developed barn was composed of tobacco loading, preparing, flue-curing, cooling and tobacco unloading sections. The flue-curing section was divided into 6 sub-sections dependent on curing requirements, and the temperature and relative humidity in each sub-section were separately set and monitored during curing. The curing results were compared with conventional bulk barn. The results showed that the running time of continuous flue-curing barn was in the range of 134-146 h, and the variations of temperature, relative humidity and air velocity in the barn met the curing requirements. Comparing with bulk curing barn, the fresh/dry tobacco weight ratio decreased slightly, the proportion of orange leaves significantly increased; the average prices of middle leaves and upper leaves raised by 1.36 RMB yuan/kg (6.04%) and 1.13 RMB yuan/kg (5.08%), the curing efficiencies promoted by 23.1 and 25.8 kg/day per worker, the energy consumption reduced by 0.18 and 0.07 RMB yuan/kg dry leaves, respectively. Continuous flue-curing barn achieves efficient heat utilization and satisfies the requirements in each curing stage.