Olive Oil Byproduct Treatment Study

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Olive Oil Byproduct Treatment Study

Study on Possible Treatments and Applications for Olive Mill Waste Water

The management of waste water remains a critical and unsolved problem, especially inregions where huge quantitiesare produced.

Yet these byproducts also containphenolic compounds recognized for their anti-inflammatory and antimicrobic properties.

That's why several approaches have been investigated to recover bioactive chemicals from olive mill waste waters in order to exploit them for pharmaceutical, nutritionaland cosmetic applications.

We already wrote about aresearch on olive oil byproductscoordinated by Prof. Maurizio Servili from Università di Perugia.

Now,another Italianstudy onpossible treatments and applicationsfor olive mill waste water(OMW) has been carried out by Dr.Giuseppe Di Lecce and fellow researchers (Alfredo Cassano, Alessandra Bendini, Carmela Conidi, Lidietta Giorno and Tullia Gallina Toschi) at the University of Bologna.

The composition of OMWshows a large variability depending on several parameters such as cultivar, harvesting time and oil extraction technology, the researchers point out.

OMW is a dark liquid effluents characterized by high concentrations of organic compounds, including organicacids, sugars, tannins, pectins and phenolic substances that make them phytotoxic and inhibit bacterial activity.

In terms of pollution, one cubic meter ofOMW is equivalent to 100-200 cubic meters ofdomestic sewage. Its uncontrolled disposal in water reservoirs leads to severe problems for the entire ecosystem.

In Di Lecce's study, olive mill waste waters were treated to evaluate the characteristics of permeate and retentate fractions produced by an integrated membrane system working at two different volume concentration factors.

Researchers evaluated the effect of two membrane-based filtration steps (microfiltration and nanofiltration) on the content of chemical oxygen demand, dry matter, sensory quality, phenolic compounds and antioxidant activity of permeate and retainedsamples.

Source: Olive Oil Times

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