Study on Removing Bitterness and Toxicant of Bitter Almond

This study investigated the effect of different methods to remove bitterness and toxicant of bitter almond. After comparing five methods(chlorite acid solution with heating or at room temperature, evaporate, chilling, salting & citric acid), it is found that the optimum method was soaking bitter kernal in salt and citric acid solution. Then, 4×2⁴ factorial design was employed to further screen the optimum variables to increase the effect of bitterness removing and maintain the sensory value of almond. The Yates' Variance analysis indicated that, according to their influencing degree, factors contributed to the effect of bitterness removing were whether or not being peeled, frequency to change soaking solution, temperature of the solutions, the ratio between almond and solution and the kind of solution. But NAOVA analysis indicated that there was not significant difference among the five factors mentioned above. The final optimum method chosen took only three days to detoxicate bitter kernels and the waste water need to be changed only once a day. Afterwards, the waste water was detoxicated successfully with bleaching powder.