Fundamentals and Technoeconomical Analysis of Exploitation of Olive Mill Wastewater to Highadded Vale By-Products

Abstract

The olive oil industry is very important in many Mediterranean countries, both in terms of wealth and tradition. The extraction of olive oil generates huge quantities of high organic wastewaters with toxic constituents that may have a great impact on land and water environments. Series of laboratory experiments, based on the technology of membrane filtration (Ultrafiltration and Nanofiltration and/or Reverse Osmosis), have been carried out for the fractionation of olive mill wastewaters into fractions with nutritive value, phytotoxic action and pure water. Based on these results, a pilot plant of membranes installed in an olive oil mill enterprise for an entire harvesting period and appropriate experiments were performed. The study showed that a fraction of pure water up to 75% can recovered and fractions that contained concentrate nutritious and polyphenol content can be isolated and further exploited in order to reduce the, indeed, high cost of the suggested treatment process. In this study, a techno-economic analysis for the implementation of the suggested method for the Region of Western Greece is presented. The present study took into account the fixed and the operational costs of the equipment, the costs for the infrastructure and land, the costs for the maintenance, etc., considering the treatment of 50,000 tones per harvesting period in the Region of Western Greece. The study showed that the establishment of one central treatment manufacture could reduce the uncontrolled disposal of OMW and their final discharging in the aqueous receptors. The exploitation of the nutritious content of the fractions as manure in fertilizers together with the polyphenol content that can be used as components of ecological herbicides can depreciate the total cost in a very short period of 1.5 years.