Buckwheat has a special place among the cereal crops. First of all, the unusual shape of the grain, which is close to the tetrahedron, attracts attention. Secondly, the buckwheat kernel is covered with a rigid fruiting shell, which plays the role of an outer cover that is removed during processing by peeling. The kernel is characterized by a very fragile kernel, which requires particularly careful handling during processing in order to obtain a high yield of whole buckwheat groats.
Since buckwheat porridge is an indigenous Slavic food, it is not surprising that the best technology for processing buckwheat into groats was developed on the thorns of the former Soviet Union. A distinctive feature of this technology is the treatment of grain with steam, which hardens the kernel and provides a high yield of cereal-cereal, and the groats themselves acquire a pleasant smell and brown color.
Buckwheat processing technology includes the following main operations: cleaning of grain and its hydrothermal treatment, fractionation, peeling, separation of peeling products. For cleaning the grain is used sieve-air and magnetic separators of any type, as well as a stone picker and a trier. Hydrothermal treatment of the grain is carried out by treating it with steam in a batch steamer followed by drying in a vertical steam dryer. Grain fractionation is carried out into 6-7 fractions in sieves and fractional peeling in rollers. After husking, husk is separated in aspirators, the mixture of collapsed and not collapsed grains is sorted in sieves, and not collapsed grains are sent for re-shelling. Selection of residual impurities contained in the groats is carried out by passing them through the paddy-machine.
Using the operations of steaming and drying, requires significant expenditure of thermal energy, so the high profitability of buckwheat processing is largely provided by the heat obtained by burning buckwheat husks.
The described technology, which is implemented without using hydrothermal treatment of grain, makes it possible to produce “green” groats.
