Biomass Recovery from Olive Oil Extraction Line: Opportunities for Reuse of By-products and Energy Saving

Abstract

There is an increasing need to produce more energy from renewable sources and improve the energy efficiency of the processes to reduce the environmental impact. At the same time, it would also be desirable to enhance the reuse of by-products from the perspective of a circular economy. With this purpose in mind it is of great interest considering the recovery of the olive pits along the extraction process for energy reuses. From this perspective, it is of great interest to consider the recovery of olive stones along the extraction process for energy reuse, in particular for the reduction of energy consumption linked to heat treatments for the conditioning of olive pastes. Mainly there are two ways to recover pits during the process: 1) by using a pomace destoner machine at the end of the process; 2) by using a combined crusher-destoner machine at the beginning of the process. In this work, the quality as biofuel of olive stones recovered with both methods was considered to evaluate the possible energy savings compared to the reference case (process line without stone recovery). In addition, the sustainability of the processes was evaluated by considering the increase in electrical energy required by the addition of the new pitting machines. The results show how an adequate organization and management of the process can lead to benefits both in terms of energy savings and plant operating costs.