INDUSTRIAL PROCESS TO SUSTAIN VIRGIN-OLIVE-OIL PRODUCTION BY CONVERTING OLIVE FRUIT CONSTITUENTS INTO MARKETABLE PRODUCTS: WATER, DEHYDRATED-SOLID AND VIRGIN-OLIVE-OIL

Fecha de publicación: 23/02/2022
Fuente: Wipo "olive oil"
Olive Oil industry faces challenges of producing virgin olive oil (12/14) quality while reducing waste production; wastewater, pomace and alpeorujo associated with oil extraction processes. In response to these challenges, this invention sustainably utilizes olive fruit (1) as a resource of three products; water, oil and solids. The invention is industrial process (Figure 1) that sustainably converts olive fruit (1) constituents into marketable products: water (5), dehydrated-solid (11) and virgin olive oil extract (12/14). The core of this industrial process is dehydrating (4) olive fruits (3) by microwave radiation to extract water. Integrating grinding-kneading-mixing (8) in a one single process based on the sequential grinding of the dehydrated olive fruit (7) constituents; and simultaneously kneading and mixing, where olive-stones act as a kneader-mixer to produce the dehydrated olive paste (9). Press-filtering (10) to extract virgin olive oil (12) from the dehydrated paste (9) and generate dehydrated solid product (11); rich in fibers, nutritional and energetic constituents, for market. Virgin olive oil extract (12), if required, is further centrifuged (13) to remove mucilage (15) and produce purified virgin olive oil extract (14).