PURPOSE:To uniformize the temperature of a tea leaf layer and to improve the drying efficiency by applying vibration to tea leaves transferred through a metallic trough and, at the same time, irradiating the leaves with microwave from above. CONSTITUTION:Tea leaves charged into a hopper 10 are passed through an electromagnet 11 to remove metal pieces, supplied to a trough 1 made of a stainless steel and transferred by vibrating the trough 1 in a direction inclined relative to the transfer direction with a vibrator 2 placed below the bottom of the trough via a shaft 21. At the same time, the tea leaves are irradiated with microwave generated by microwave signal sources 41-44 and outputted from the openings 61-64 of waveguides 51-54 and the dried leaves are taken out through the discharge port 14. The tip edge of the longer side of each waveguide is bent outward and parallel to the bottom of the trough 1.
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