The air screen cleaner is the core equipment in the chickpea cleaning process in Ethiopia. Its main function is to efficiently separate impurities from chickpeas, improve the purity of the beans and the quality of subsequent processing.
1. Core Function: Precisely Separating Impurities
The air sieve cleaner uses a combined “wind + screening” process to address the diverse impurities found in post-harvest chickpeas. It can be categorized into two types:
Air separation: Utilizing the weight differences of various materials, an adjustable airflow removes lighter impurities (such as dust, straw, and shrunken hulls) while retaining heavier, full chickpeas.
Sieving separation: Using multiple layers of screens with varying apertures, the cleaner separates impurities (such as pebbles, lumps of soil, and broken beans) that are out of size for the chickpeas. This process also allows for preliminary grading of chickpeas by particle size.
2. Key Value to the Ethiopian Chickpea Industry
For Ethiopia, where chickpea cultivation is primarily based on smallholder farmers and post-harvest processing technology is relatively basic, the use of wind screen cleaners can directly address industry pain points:
Increasing Product Value: Cleaned chickpeas have lower impurity levels, meeting quality standards for domestic processing and export, and preventing the purchase price from being depressed by excessive impurities.
Reducing Loss and Storage Risk: Removing impurities such as straw and soil prevents chickpeas from becoming moldy and infested with insects during storage, extending their shelf life and reducing post-harvest losses.
Suitable for Smallholder Farmers: Some small wind screen cleaners are simple to operate and low-cost, making them suitable for centralized use by smallholder farmers or cooperatives, compensating for the inefficiency and poor results of manual cleaning.
3. For the Industry: Promoting Standardization and Export Potential
Supporting Standardized Production: The use of air-screen cleaning machines can establish a unified “post-cleaning quality standard” for Ethiopian chickpeas, eliminating the randomness inherent in manual processing and laying the foundation for large-scale, standardized development of the industry.
Enhancing Export Competitiveness: The international market has strict requirements for the impurity content of agricultural products. Meeting these standards through air-screen cleaning can help Ethiopian chickpeas break through export quality barriers and expand their overseas market share.
Our Taobo air screen cleaner, stone remover, and gravity machine can remove impurities from grain and legume crops. If you are interested, please contact us!
Post time: Oct-16-2025
