Residue Management in the Olive Oil industry:
Residue Management in the Olive Oil industry:
Valorisation and Environmental protection
Valorisation and Environmental protection
(ReMOOVE)
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Olive oil is a key food product in a Mediterranean diet. The global olive oil market was valued at USD 7.83 billion in 2017, with an expected market grow to reach USD 11.04 billion by 2025. The European Union (EU) remains as the top olive-oil producer area in the world, producing around 70% of the world olive oil in 2019, mostly in Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. Furthermore, this sector is an important source of employment in many Mediterranean rural areas and is very valuable to their local culture and heritage.
Producing olive oil creates massive amounts of waste, which generates a substantial environmental impact. ReMOOVE (Residue Management in the Olive Oil industry: Valorisation and Environmental protection) explores existing and novel possibilities of complementing the current technology to obtain olive oil to establish an innovative olive-oil biorefinery that converts its main waste, ‘alperujo’, into the raw material of different industrial processes. ReMOOVE focuses on assessing the environmental impact of a proposed waste valorisation plan integrated in the olive-oil biorefinery and compare it to the environmental impacts caused by current alperujo management methods. Additionally, the technical and socio-economic feasibility of the proposed system change is being studied, to assure the solution presented can be implemented in the olive-oil industrial sector.
MAIN OBJECTIVE
MAIN OBJECTIVE
The overall aim of ReMOOVE is to investigate management opportunities of alperujo, integrate them into an olive-oil biorefinery where these materials are valorised, and assess environmental impacts created by these processes. This will ensure that alperujo will be managed in an environmentally friendly way, closing the loop of the olive-oil manufacturing industry and consequently supporting the implementation of circular-economy principles in this key sector in the economy of Southern Europe.
Specific objetives
Specific objetives
Objective 1
Objective 2
To study current practices of alperujo management and their relevant legislation
To identify the most promising waste valorisation opportunities (WVOs) for alperujo, which will be trialled and optimised in a laboratory scale
Objective 3
Objective 4
To analyse the environmental impact of the valorisation processes by LCA and compare the results against the environmental impacts of current alperujo management
To assess the economic performance of the valorisation solution proposed and possible challenges to overcome to implement it at an industrial scale, as well as potential benefits or impacts to the society
WORK PLAN
WORK PLAN
Stage 1
Identification of key issues and opportunities for waste valorisation
The types of waste generated in the olive-oil industry will be identified and quantified, broken down by country. Their yearly evolution will be studied. Current practices to manage alperujo in the EU will be investigated. Their relevant legislation will be studied to make sure the possible ways to valorise alperujo, which will be investigated in detail in Stage 2, can be implemented at an industrial scale.
Stage 2
Design of waste valorisation strategies
The following WVOs will be investigated via laboratory experiments and their potential to integrate them in a biorefinery will be assessed: use of clay and fresh alperujo to manufacture “green roofs” (WVO1), recovery of compounds of interest from the liquid fraction of degreased alperujo by thermal hydrolysis (WVO2), production of low-cost adsorbent materials from the solid fraction resulting from the hydrolysis process of degreased alperujo for the removal of contaminants (heavy metals and emerging contaminants such as ibuprofen and bisphenol A) from wastewater (WVO3), and production of fuel gas by gasification of the solid fraction obtained from thermal hydrolysis of the degreased alperujo, with or without previous torrefaction (WVO4).
Stage 3
Analysis of environmental impacts by Life-Cycle Assessment
The goal and scope of the LCA study will be precisely defined during the first half of the project. It is foreseen that the functional unit will be 1 kg of alperujo treated and the system boundaries will be extended from the olive oil industrial plant (namely ‘almazara’) to a wider geographical region to make sure all relevant environmental impacts are accounted. Oleícola el Tejar will be used as a case study throughout the project to provide data for the foreground system, but the background system will also be thoroughly modelled, as the fundamental aim at this stage is to provide an exhaustive, reliable LCA analysis of the implications of alperujo management in a given geographical region. The first four months of this Stage will be focused on collecting data from laboratory valorisation experiments selected in Stage 2 and from Oleícola el Tejar. The remaining eight months of Stage 3 will be used to create an LCA model and run a number of simulations in different small and large-scale scenarios.
Stage 4
Feasibility study of the olive-oil biorefinery
The upscaling of the waste valorisation solutions and the biorefinery approach proposed in ReMOOVE will be analysed with Oleícola el Tejar, paying close attention to possible challenges for an implementation at an industrial scale. Their economic performance, as well as potential benefits or impacts to the society, will be studied.
Project partners
Project partners
Dr Guillermo Garcia-Garcia is an expert in the study of the environmental impact of the treatment of food waste.
Prof Francisca Mónica Calero de Hoces is a world leader in the study of management of wastes and residues and their environmental impacts, with significant amount of recent work in the field of alperujo management.
Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission
Secondment host. This phase will take place in Dr Serenella Sala’s research group in the JRC, who will support the candidate in the modelling of the environmental system by the LCA methodology.
Industrial partner. Their expertise in the areas of valorisation systems for residues of the olive-oil industry, new technologies for extraction of pomace oil and the use of pomace oil and olive biomass will be used to optimise the waste valorisation plan.
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