Pneumatic Design Optimization in Hazelnut Shelling Process

Abstract

As Turkey is the country which holds two-thirds of the world hazelnut production, hazelnut has become an important element of export. Despite there are hazelnut production in different continents of the world, the suitability of climate and land conditions, native species and hazelnut cultivation for many years present this production potential. In parallel with issues such as maintenance of hazelnut plants, mechanization of agriculture maintenance of hazelnut processing conditions is also important in terms of increasing industrial product market. The efficiency of all the steps from storage to packaging must be maximized for the processing of high added value nuts and hazelnut products in industrial plants. The necessary improvements to ensure this quality and efficiency can be achieved by reducing the cost of the hazelnut shelling process, which is the first step in the production by extracting the kernel from the shell. In addition to reduce initial investment and maintenance costs, the development of such systems those will also reduce the rate of impacted hazelnut will bring positive results on industry. In this study, existing hazelnut shelling systems have been investigated, advantages and disadvantages have been evaluated and a pneumatic shelling system has been proposed which can avoid existing crushing systems as cost and product quality. A solid model of the proposed system is presented.