An IOT Proof of Concept for Black Tea Production and Quality Monitoring.

Abstract

The production of tea in African tea factories relies on human sensory analysis to determine optimum fermentation levels to produce customer desired tea grades. This process is subject to errors of omission resulting from unpredictable human insensitivity and variability due to individualistic differentiations leading to inconsistency in produced tea quality. The purpose of this project is to show how concepts and technologies pertaining to the Internet of Things (IoT) can be used to monitor black tea production process. The application of Internet of Things to the analysis of the tea quality parameters can help in solving some of existing problems of the quality and production monitoring methods. The fermentation stage largely contributes towards the quality of the made-tea because it is the process in which many volatile and non-volatile enzymes are produced. It is for this reason that the, project focuses on the design of real-time fermentation monitoring system to improve the current mechanism of monitoring.