A whole cocoa bean is the starting material for making cocoa mass (aka cocoa liquor), cocoa butter, and cocoa powder, used as ingredients in chocolate and chocolate flavored products.  

The cocoa bean consists primarily of the cotyledon or nib (88%), an outer shell (11%) and a mix of very fine (<1mm) cocoa and non-cocoa related matter (1%). To separate the cotyledon from the shell, the bean is commonly cracked first, which can generate nibs of small but variable sizes and shapes, making it difficult to sort them from the fines and shell fragments.  

To ensure the best cocoa quality possible and to minimize the likelihood of contaminants like metals and toxins, the shell and fine components should be separated from the nibs. Current industrial systems, most commonly aspirators that leverage the density difference to blow the lighter components out of the stream, struggle to fully segregate the different components, leading to yield losses from misclassifying nibs as shells/dust. An additional complication is that cocoa beans are naturally high in fat, which can cause caking, where nibs and fines clump together. This reduces the effectiveness of industrial systems (15-20 MT/hour throughput) designed to separate these components and leads to further losses.