Mechanical harvester and double flow ciclone separator: prototypes to improve saffron spice productions

In the Saffron spice production, actually hand made, the harvesting phase and stigma separation would greatly benefit from a mechanization. This paper is concerned with the design and characterization of a saffron flower harvesting and spice separation mechanized system, that system is a workable integrated system to obtain the spice for drying and packaging final phases of spice production. The main parts of the system are represented by a harvesting portable device and a double flow three way cyclone separator. The mechanical operating principle of the harvesting portable device and the working way of the double flow three way cyclone are described. Experimental characterisation illustrates in the paper the mechanical and fluid dynamics behaviour of harvesting and separating devices.