How do machines de-shell nuts like sunflower seeds and peanuts in massive quantities without harming the actual nut itself?
In: Technology
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It’s just like you normally shell a nut just on an insutrial scale.
Usually involves and nut and something that smashes it hard enoguh to break the shell but not smash the nut. Then the shell and nut are separated.
I only know how they do it on tangerines. They disintegrate the outer layer with acid water and after it‘s done they put it in leach 🙂
Well, they do often break the nut meat. Then the nuts get sorted by size. Whole nuts fetch a premium. The cracked bits get sold as pieces or are ground down further.
It varies depending on the type of nut, but generally speaking they go through a machine with a rotating drum inside a stationary drum: the gap between the drums is slightly smaller than the whole nut with its shell but bigger than the nutmeat inside. This gently cracks the shell, and then the nutmeat and shell pieces fall out through the bottom.
Typically the shells are separated from the nutmeats using an air blast, which blows the light shells away and leaves the heavy nutmeats behind.
How do they do it without harming the nutmeat? Well, they do harm a lot of them, but they use screens and air flow and manual inspection to sort them by size and weight, so the intact nuts get sold in the snack aisle, while the broken ones get sold as chopped nuts, butter, meal, or oil.
https://www.lmcarter.com/peanut-shellers/
Peanuts are shelled kinda like grating cheese. There is a set of screens (like holes in cheese grate) in which the whole in-shell peanut is on with holes large enough for peanut meat to fall thru. Then on top is a set of bars that rub the peanuts one direction then other like grating cheese… the shells slowly breaks up allowing meat inside to fall thru. Hulls are blown/vacuumed off and you are left with raw shelled peanuts.
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