It is no secret that most of the Ukrainian walnuts are collected in private farms. Its quality is not uniform - different varieties, sizes, humidity, shell thickness. Industrial orchards with high-quality varietal walnuts are just beginning to bear fruit, and the owners are trying to sell the walnut for export or under pre-contracted contracts.
When buying a walnut from the public or from suppliers, it is important to check the quality by cracking. Careful checking will ensure that a good quality walnut is purchased, which makes it easier to process, gives a higher percentage of the whole kernel and the opportunity to earn more.
Verification steps:
- Inspection of appearance - the walnut must be clean, without damage, without traces of dampness, mold, pests.
- A container with a walnut should not be too light or heavy. In case it is light, there is a chance to buy overdried last year's walnut. A heavy bag can be a sign of a greedy or wet walnut.
- It is necessary to conduct a sample - remove walnuts from different parts of the container and check them by cracking.
However, it is not always possible to carefully check, especially with large volumes of purchases. Therefore, you need to be prepared for the fact that part of the walnut will be “greedy”.
Processing a greedy walnut requires an additional cracking. This can be manual cracking, when workers cracked the walnut manually using cracking tools, or automated, using a walnut breaker.
In the first case, you need to organize jobs and hire workers, pay them a salary. When a greedy walnut is cracked, even with the most careful cracked, it will not work to get a whole kernel, therefore, workers will process the walnut into crumbs, 1/8 and 1/4. Depending on the speed of work and the experience of the sorter, one person can sort out 15-25 kg of walnuts in the shell per day and give out 6-9 kg of the kernel upon completion. This is important to take into account when drawing up a business plan in order to understand the real profitability of processing.
Given all of the above, many walnut businessmen are switching to automated cracking. The walnut breaker cracking the walnut into the same crumbs, 1/4 and 1/8, but the cracking speed is about 200 kg per hour. The walnut breaker will replace up to 100 sorters.
In enterprises that strive to obtain a whole kernel, the walnut breaker is installed after the vibrating screen. For maximum automation, the uncracked walnut after the vibrating sieve is fed directly into the walnut breaker by means of a conveyor.
Enterprises that are primarily aimed at volumes install the walnut breaker immediately after the nutcracker.
When processing Ukrainian walnuts, the walnut breaker is an important component, which closes a significant part of the issues associated with additional cracking.