Residue Management in the Olive Oil industry: Valorisation and Environmental protection

The main objective of ReMOOVE is to study existing and novel opportunities for an integral valorisation of alperujo, a residue from the extraction of olive oil that creates significant environmental impacts. The aim of the valorisation is to obtain compounds and materials of high interest and minimise the environmental impacts associated with alperujo management. The following valorisation routes will be investigated: use of clay and fresh alperujo to manufacture ?green roofs?, recovery of compounds of interest from the liquid fraction of degreased alperujo by thermal hydrolysis, production of low-cost adsorbent materials from the solid fraction resulting from the hydrolysis process of degreased alperujo for the removal of contaminants from wastewater, and production of fuel gas by gasification of the solid fraction obtained from thermal hydrolysis of the degreased alperujo. Once the valorisation processes are defined and have been tested in a laboratory scale, a thorough environmental impact study will be carried out to ensure that the sustainability performance of the proposed alternative is superior than that of the current waste management strategy. For this, the Life-Cycle Assessment methodology will be used to evaluate environmental impacts for all relevant impact categories, from the moment alperujo is obtained until alperujo and all its by-products are managed. A socio-economic assessment and resilience & risk analysis will also be performed in the last stages of the project to ensure the solutions proposed are viable at an industrial scale. It is expected to integrate the alperujo valorisation processes into the olive oil industry, upgrading existing manufacturing plants to olive oil biorefineries and therefore supporting the circularity in this key sector in the economy of Southern Europe.