Patent ID: 8272322

Claim:
Apparatus for the separation of objects that are joined together by means of a removable link, in particular fruit and vegetable products, such as for example cherries as joined together by their stems, comprising: a collecting vessel adapted to contain said products and a liquid in which said products are immersed, one or more conduits extending downstream from said collecting vessel, a respective inflow mouth situated at an end portion of each said conduit downstream from said collecting vessel and accessible from the latter, pumps located inside respective ones of said conduits and adapted to cause the liquid to whirl about jointly with the products, and to pump them into the outflow mouths at the respective opposite end portion thereof, so as to eject them therefrom, wherein said collecting vessel has a wall facing said inflow mouths which has an upper edge adapted to perform substantially as a spillway upstream of said pumps, said upper edge being situated at a higher level than said inflow mouths, a chute disposed between said upper edge and said inflow mouths adapted to cause said liquid and said objects to converge toward said inflow mouths, said conduits being oriented vertically, the respective inflow mouths being situated at the respective lower end portions thereof, and the respective outflow mouths, situated at the upper end portion of each one of said conduits, are fluidly connected by free gravity fall to a sieve, below the outlet mouths, for catching said objects, while allowing liquid to pass through, a recovery tank for receiving the liquid passing through the sieve, a liquid-recovery conduit connecting said recovery tank to said collecting vessel, a pump for transferring liquid from said recovery tank back to said collecting vessel, and a transfer chamber upstream of said collecting vessel, said chamber being open at its top, said liquid-recovery conduit opening at the bottom of the transfer chamber, and an open flow-way between said transfer chamber and said collecting vessel, said flow-way and said transfer chamber having side and bottom walls whose upper edges lie higher than the upper edges of said collecting vessel.