A New Technology for Olive Oil Manufacture

B. Škarica and B. Tripodi

Comagri-Pieralisi, Viale Cavallotti n 40,60035, Jesi Italy

Article history:
Received November 3, 1994
Accepted December  23, 1994

Summary:
The traditional system for continons processing of olive fruits by means of centrifugal extractors requires the addition of warm water and the olive paste is separated into three phases: oil, vegetable water and olive residue. The disadvantages of this process include great consumption of warm water, rinsing out of valuable components (especially natural antioxidants) and pollution of environment because of considerable amounts of waste water. Therefore, a new decanter was designed to separate the olive paste in two parts: olive oil as one phase and the cake, together with the vegetable water, as the other phase. The new "integrated" system enables simple switching from the 2-phase to the 3-phase or vice versa. The results of the comparison of this two procedures are discussed.