The babassu nut (Orbignya speciosa) consists of fours parts: the epicarp, mesocarp, endocarp and kernel. Currently the babassu nut is collected and cracked manually by women and children, which is one of the social problems of the Brazil's North/Norwest region. The purpose of this work was to develop an effective technique for removing the shell of the babassu nut. Characterizations were made of the volume, mass, real density, length, transversal perimeter and distance between the epicarp and the kernel. These data were analyzed to establish a correlation between the amount of kernels in each babassu nut and the average of the values of the parameters under study. To determine the compressive force required to break babassu nuts, six experiments were carried out involving: a) untreated nuts; b) nuts peeled by abrasion; c) nuts dried at 120 °C; d) dried at 120 °C and peeled by abrasion; e) dried at 120 °C peeled by abrasion, hydrated and frozen at -18 °C; and f) dried at 120 °C, peeled by abrasion, hydrated and puffed. An estimate was made of the average time required to remove the epicarp and mesocarp in the shelling procedure, and of the time required to reach mass equilibrium in the drying and hydration procedure.
babassu; nut breaking; kernels; compression; pretreatment
