• RTD(Ready-to-Drink) Tea refers to tea drinks made by soaking tea leaves in water through extraction, filtration, clarification and other processes, or adding water, sugar liquid, sour agent, food flavor, fruit juice or plant (grain) extract to the tea juice. The finished product has the unique flavor of tea, contains natural tea polyphenols and other active ingredients of tea, and has nutrition and health benefits. It is a multi-functional beverage for cooling and quenching thirst.
• The RTD tea processing line capacity ranges from 500L/H  to 18000L/H, the end products can be filled into bottles, cans or cartons.
• Raw materials can be dry green tea, black tea, oolong tea, flowers, herbs and other plants. Normally 1kg fresh dry tea leaves can produce 100L-250L tea drinks according to different brewing processes, and the desired strength of the final tea drinks.
• Commercial RTD tea drink production typically involves extracting tea juice from fresh tea leaves, filtering the solids in tea juice, blending and processing them with other ingredients such as water, sugar, and flavorings, pasteurizing/sterilizing the mixture, packaging it in bottles or cans, and distributing it to retailers for sale to consumers.
• Tea beverages (including fruit flavors, and milk flavors), concentrated tea juice, tea powder and other products can be produced.
• The RTD tea drinks production line configuration is flexible, and equipment with different functions can be realized according to the customer’s different final product requirements
• Tea extract can be used for leaching in basket type or tilt-type, continuous countercurrent type, etc.
• The cold brew tea extraction temperature is moderate(40℃-50℃), and the nutrition and flavor of the tea can be retained to the maximum extent while ensuring the juice yield of the tea.
• Full automatic machine to ensure the high efficiency of the whole production line. The modular design of the whole line, combines different processing techniques.
• The whole processing line is equipped with CIP system, and equipment and pipelines are easy to clean.
• The material contact parts of the system are all made of 304 stainless steel, which fully meets the requirements of food hygiene and safety.
• Since tea beverages contain tea polyphenols, they are easily oxidized during processing. To avoid this phenomenon, we have corresponding devices to prevent oxidation during the process of blending and filling.

Pure RTD tea beverage: Beverage made by extracting tea juice from fresh tea leaves, adding plant or grain extracts, syrups, sour agents and other ingredients to the tea drinks, after mixing and sterilizing, then filling into small bottles or tin cans.

Fruit juice or milk RTD tea beverage: Add the original fruit juice, concentrated fruit juice or milk, sugar liquid, spices, acidulant and other auxiliary materials to the tea extract, and fill it into the carton or bottle container after mixing and sterilizing.

Bubble tea drinks: also called Boba tea, are tea-based drinks that originated in Taiwan. They are composed of tea, milk, pre-made Tapioca Pearls(Boba), sugar, and flavors. The bubble tea drinks manufacturing process involves brewing tea base, preparing and cooking pearls, mixing tea base, milk, pearls, and flavors in the mixing tank, and then after sterilizing the drinks, filling them into cups, cans or bottles.

Soda-type RTD tea beverage: A tea beverage prepared by adding tea extract as the main ingredient, adding CO2, spices and other ingredients, it is a common carbonated tea beverage.

Health-care functional RTD tea beverage: It is made with tea extract or tea polyphenols as the main material, adding Chinese herbal medicine, plant raw materials (ginseng, wolfberry, turmeric, etc.) or nutritional fortifiers, then after mixing, sterilizing, then filled into bottles, cartons or cans.

Fermented tea beverage: Most of the typical fermented tea beverage is kombucha, which is a fermented beverage made from brewed tea and sugar.

Instant tea beverage: The fresh tea leaves after extracting, filtration, concentrating and drying to make into the instant tea powder, and filling into small packages.

Fresh tea leaves as raw materials: Fresh dry tea leaves will be fed into the extracting tank to get the tea juice, then use the plate-type cooler to cool down the tea extract from 85-90℃ to 55℃. After cooling down, then the extracted tea will be pumped into a centrifuge separator to remove the solid particles and suspended matter, and now we get the clarified tea extract juice. The clarified tea will be mixed with water, sugar, citric acid, and flavor agent, and then homogenized, degassed and sterilized the mixed tea drinks, and at last RTD tea will be filled into bottles, cartons, or tin cans.

The tea extraction system is a process of soaking drying tea leaves or herbs in pure water at 55°C to 95°C (depending on different process conditions), and then extracting the active ingredients in the tea leaves and separating them into tea soup. The control of hot water temperature, the ratio of tea to water, the extraction time and frequency, and the separation and clarification of tea soup are the key points of this system.

SUS304 material basket type jacketed extraction tank with agitator, temperature sensor, stainless steel hanging basket and electric hoist. Put the fresh tea leaves into the extraction basket and using deionized pure water at 85-95℃holding for 10-15 min, then use a cloth bag filter to filter out the tea residue, we will get the tea extract; But when we make cold brew tea drinks, the tea extraction process is cold extracted, so we will use the vacuum extraction tank, the extracting temperature is much lower than hot extracting about40-50℃, with the vacuum tea extracting,  the tea juice nutrient, flavor and color are kept at the maximum extent. Tea and water ratio: primary extraction ratio: 1:9~12; secondary extraction ratio: 1:7~8.

The pore size of the tea extraction basket is usually between 0.2 mm and 2 mm. The fine pore size (0.2-0.5 mm) is suitable for fine tea leaves or broken tea, preventing tea residue from entering the tea soup. The larger pore size (1-2 mm) is suitable for large-leaf tea or whole-leaf tea, allowing the tea leaves to fully expand in the water.

When the basket-type extraction tank is working, the tea leaves are first put into the basket, and then the basket is moved into the extraction tank with an electric hoist. After the extraction process is completed, the basket is lifted out of the tank by the electric hoist, and then the tea leaves are unloaded manually.

The other popular tea extraction tank is the straight-type bottom-opening extraction tank, the extracting tank can be used for positive, negative, and atmospheric pressure extraction, pneumatic stirring, and material discharge, it is high efficiency and fully automatic, saving labor.

Before the tea juice enters the centrifuge, it needs to be pre-filtered using a vibrating sieve filter or double filter to remove large solid particles and impurities. The pore size of the filter is selected between 100-200μm. After pre-filtration, the solid content in the tea juice ranges from 0.5% to 1%. Then, a disc centrifuge is used to further separate the solids in the tea juice.

The disc centrifuge primarily separates tea powder and tea cream in the tea juice. Another important parameter for the separation effectiveness of the centrifuge is to ensure the retention of tea polyphenols. Since tea polyphenols are prone to oxidation, it is necessary to use a fully enclosed space during the separation process to maintain the quality of the tea juice.

This disk separation process is also called tea drink fine filtration, The main purpose of the centrifugal separator is to remove impurities after tea juice extraction. The centrifuge rotation speed can reach 5890r/min, when the material liquid passes through the machine, the centrifugal effect produced by the high-speed rotation is used to separate the water-insoluble impurities and discharge them from the material liquid.

The membrane separation technology can be used in RTD tea drinks processing plants to produce concentrated clear tea extract.

1. The pore size of the ultrafiltration membrane is 1000Da-50 nm, which can remove impurities such as macromolecular dissolved substances and colloids in tea beverages. The permeate is clear and transparent, and it is not easy to precipitate and become turbid after cooling;
2. The ultrafiltration membrane removes impurities, and the permeate is clear and transparent, which improves the purity and quality of tea polyphenols and improves the product yield;
3. The membrane concentration process belongs to low-temperature concentration, and the operating temperature is less than 50℃, which can retain the tea aroma and make the product have good color, aroma and taste;
4. The degree of automation is high, and it adopts PLC plus inverter control, which is simple and convenient to operate;
5. The membrane element adopts imported membrane elements, which have a long service life and do not need to be replaced frequently.
6. The tea beverage has no sedimentation or turbidity, and the “tea cheese” phenomenon(tea polyphenols and caffeine) will not appear.

The mixing tank will mix purified water, tea extract, citric acid, fruit juice, milk, sodium citrate, sucrose, and flavor in the best proportions. Stir fully to completely dissolve the raw materials. Add clarifier and stabilizer and adjust PH value. When the tea beverage is stirred, the space above the liquid level of the mixing tank is protected by CO2 to prevent the tea polyphenols from oxidizing and discoloring during the blending. The stirring speed is not higher than 50rpm.

The purpose of homogenization is to further refine the fine suspended particles contained in the tea juice through high pressure, so that the particle size is evenly dispersed in the tea juice. The working pressure of the high-pressure homogenizer can be adjusted from 10-50mPa, and the pressure of the homogenizer can be determined according to the soluble solid content in the tea juice.

During the blending process of tea juice, air may be mixed in, and the oxygen in the air will chemically react with tea polyphenols and VC in the tea juice, resulting in the loss of nutrients and color deterioration of the tea drink. Therefore, a degasser is needed to remove the oxygen in the tea juice.

Tea beverages are low-acid beverages with a PH value of above 6.0, so it needs to use ultra-high-temperature sterilization. Pure tea beverage uses a sterilization process at 115°C holding for 5 minutes or 135°C holding for 3-5S; Milk tea beverage containing dairy products requires a sterilization process at 121°C holding for 30 minutes; Juice tea drinks can lower the sterilization temperature because the juice is acidic. We usually use tubular-type sterilizers to treat the tea beverage.

The sterilization temperature should be controlled well. If it is too high, it will easily cause browning of the material liquid, and if it is too low, it will affect the sterilization effect. Adding an appropriate amount of -cyclodextrin can effectively prevent the color change and aroma deterioration of the material liquid caused by high-temperature sterilization to produce.

The sterilized tea needs to be filled into bottles, tin cans or cartons instantly, and the filling temperature is more than 89℃. After filling and sealing, one liquid nitrogen filler will be applied to spray the liquid nitrogen into a container to exchange the air. The cleanliness of the filling room meets class 10,000 level(verification is required before production); the space temperature is less than 30℃, the humidity is less than 70%; the number of air changes is 50 times per hour.

This system includes two machines, which is inverse bottle sterilizing conveyor and spray type pasteurizing cooling tunnel.

The capped semi-finished product quickly passes through the bottle inverse conveyor system, and the passing time is about 40s. During this period, the material liquid in the bottle uses its own heat to sterilize the bottle cap and bottle mouth again, and then enters the spray cooling device through the conveyor belt.
The warm water sprayed out by the spray cooling section, cool water rinses the material liquid. At the same time, the sudden temperature change caused by the spray cooling section can also play the role of re-sterilization.