Technologically, the processing of almonds is similar to the processing of other types of nuts – they are cleaned from the green pericarp, sorted by size, and the almonds are cracked and sorted to obtain a cleaned kernel.
Special cleaning machines are used to clean the green skin of almonds. They carefully and quickly remove the green pericarp, leaving the shell intact.
Regarding the industrial processing of almonds, it also has its own characteristics due to the specific shape of almonds.
A vibrating sieve is used to calibrate the almonds in the shell. It can be a vibrating screen with a capacity of 200 or 1000 kg/h. Almonds sorted by size are packed, delivered to the buyer, or sent for cracking.
A drum nutcracker is used for the industrial cracking of almonds. It adapts to the size of the almond and gives a high yield of the whole kernel – up to 90%. A drum-type nutcracker is effective for thick and thin-shelled almonds as it has flexible settings.
Vibro sieves with aspiration are used to sort cracked almonds. The equipment sorts the kernels by size – separately into whole and damaged ones, and the aspiration system separates the kernel from the shell.
The final stage of industrial processing is sorting and quality control of finished products on an inspection tape. Workers select everything that should not be included in the packaging – pieces of shell that could accidentally fall into the kernel container, damaged kernels, or kernels that do not match the color.
For processing almonds, you can use a basic set of equipment or an industrial complex, depending on the needs.