The project lays the foundations on the innovative idea of applying US technology to the oil sector, an idea developed by UNIBA starting from laboratory experiments with a TRL3 and developing an industrial scale up that allowed the project partnership to transfer the know-how necessary to reach TRL9 in this project. For the end of the project, the 1000 kg/h small scaled-up prototype was completely assembled and shipped to Ctic Cita where it was tested with different type olives and different maturity indexes, at different power levels (25%, 50%, 75% and 100%). In parallel, Cedrat and Pieralisi defined the design of the full-scale prototype with the main goal to reach the production flow rate of 4000kg/h based on a concept of 4 identical machines very similar to the one tested at Ctic Cita facilities.
The second period should have been dedicated to the development and construction of the full-scale machine arriving to the nominal 4000kg/h flowrate, but due the international emergency related to COVID-19, some activities were lagging behind the original planning in terms of timing. Therefore, an extension of the project duration was requested. Taking advantage of the extension, the scaled-up prototype was also tested during the 2020-2021 campaign adding the combination of the thermal effect to consolidate results that prove the correct operation of the machine in terms of yield, free fatty acids, peroxide values, K232, K270, polyphenols, volatile compounds, etc. The tests were very important to mill GREEN OLIVES, so they were done before the green olives season’s end in an olive oil mill based in Apulia, Italy. In parallel, a continuous monitoring of the olive oil market and the olive mills market was performed. All the results obtained up to this moment were used by Cedrat and Pieralisi for the development of the final industrial equipment.
In the third period, OLIVE-SOUND 4x reactor was assembled in Pieralisi facilities and then sent to Almazara Del Ebro olive mill for the installation. The scaled industrial machine was tested with different kind of olives as planned: Arbequina, Empeltre and Picual olive cultivars. Ctic Cita carried out the sampling during the different tests in the three stages of maturation that were processed. The results were analysed by physico-chemical and sensory analysis where it was confirmed that the use of US allows obtaining similar yields to traditional processing without affecting the quality of the product (all the oils complied with the standards established by the UE) and reducing the processing time.
OLIVE-SOUND machine was presented to the “XX Simposium Científico-Técnico” that took place at Expoliva, one of the most important olive oil global event. A webinar took place between partners and possible future customers of OLIVE-SOUND reactor.
