Use of Pichia fermentans and Candida sp. strains for the biological treatment of stored olive mill wastewater

Assessment of the impact of diluted and pretreated olive mill wastewater on the treatment efficiency by infiltration-percolation using natural bio-adsorbents

The current study was carried out to treat the olive mill wastewater (OMW) via infiltration percolation process, using low-cost natural adsorbents that could improve the ability of the system to enhance the disposal rate of elimination of pollutant from the OMW. The experimental pilot was composed of three PVC (polyvinyl chloride) columns with 10 cm in diameter and 110-cm height equipped with lateral air entries. Each column was filled with four layers of 10 cm of a mixture of sand (70%), charcoal (20%) and sawdust (10%) respectively. These layers were alternated by four permeable layers of 10 cm of Pouzzolane. To assess the effect of the pretreatment on the efficiency of the system, three types of OMW were used: raw OMW, diluted OMW with domestic wastewater at 1/1(v/v) ratio and OMW pretreated with lime. For the column feed with raw OMW, an average removal of total COD (41%), dissolved COD (54%), NH4-N (40.25%), NO₃^- (15.76%), total phosphorus (55.63%) and orthophosphate (50.84%) was recorded. The results showed that the column feed with diluted OMW with domestic wastewater was the most efficient one with a removal rate that reached 93.2% of total COD, 86.2% of dissolved COD, 92% of polyphenol, 92% of orthophosphate (OP), 97.2% of total phosphorus (TP) and 81% of NH4-N. The pretreatment of OMW with lime gave the lowest removal rate for all the parameters: total COD (34%), dissolved COD (50%), NH4-N (30%), NO₃^- (- 21%), total phosphorus (15.19%) and orthophosphate (9.04%). This study demonstrated that the dilution is a way to optimize the efficiency of the system of infiltration-percolation in treating the OMW.

Olive Mill Wastewater as Renewable Raw Materials to Generate High Added-Value Ingredients for Agro-Food Industries

Olive oil production represents an agro-industrial activity of vital economic importance for many Mediterranean countries. However, it is associated with the generation of a huge amount of by-products, both in solid and liquid forms, mainly constituted by olive mill wastewater, olive pomace, wood, leaves, and stones. Although for many years olive by-products have only been considered as a relevant environmental issue, in the last decades, numerous studies have deeply described their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, analgesic, antimicrobial, antihypertensive, anticancer, anti-hyperglycemic activities. Therefore, the increasing interest in natural bioactive compounds represents a new challenge for olive mills. Studies have focused on optimizing methods to extract phenols from olive oil by-products for pharmaceutical or cosmetic applications and attempts have been made to describe microorganisms and metabolic activity involved in the treatment of such complex and variable by-products. However, few studies have investigated olive oil by-products in order to produce added-value ingredients and/or preservatives for food industries. This review provides an overview of the prospective of liquid olive oil by-products as a source of high nutritional value compounds to produce new functional additives or ingredients and to explore potential and future research opportunities.

A review on the use of membrane technology and fouling control for olive mill wastewater treatment

Olive mill effluents (OME) by-produced have significantly increased in the last decades as a result of the boost of the olive oil agro-industrial sector and due to the conversion into continuous operation centrifugation technologies. In these effluents, the presence of phytotoxic recalcitrant pollutants makes them resistant to biological degradation and thus inhibits the efficiency of biological and conventional processes. Many reclamation treatments as well as integrated processes for OME have already been proposed and developed but not led to completely satisfactory and cost-effective results. Olive oil industries in its current status, typically small mills dispersed, cannot afford such high treatment costs. Furthermore, conventional treatments are not able to abate the significant dissolved monovalent and divalent ions concentration present in OME. Within this framework, membrane technology offers high efficiency and moderate investment and maintenance expenses. Wastewater treatment by membrane technologies is growing in the recent years. This trend is owed to the fact of the availability of new membrane materials, membrane designs, membrane module concepts and general know-how, which have promoted credibility among investors. However, fouling reduces the membrane performances in time and leads to premature substitution of the membrane modules, and this is a problem of cost efficiency since wastewater treatment must imply low operating costs. Appropriate fouling inhibition methods should assure this result, thus making membrane processes for wastewater stream treatment both technically and economically feasible. In this paper, the treatment of the effluents by-produced in olive mills, generally called olive mill wastewaters, will be addressed. Within this context, the state of the art of the different pretreatments and integral membrane processes proposed up to today will be gathered and discussed, with an insight in the problem of fouling.

Impacts of operating conditions on nanofiltration of secondary-treated two-phase olive mill wastewater

In the present paper, a thin-film composite polymeric nanofiltration (NF) membrane is examined for the tertiary treatment of secondary-treated two-phase olive mill wastewater, in substitution of the reverse osmosis membrane used in previous work by the Authors. Overcoming the deleterious fouling phenomena persistently encountered in membrane processes managing wastewater streams was indeed pursued. Setting the adequate parameters of the operating variables - that is, operating at ambient temperature upon a net pressure equal to 13 bar (Pc), tangential crossflow in the order of 2.55 m s(-1) to attain enough turbulence over the membrane, and above the point of zero charge (pH > 5.8) of the membrane - ensured high steady-state permeate productivity (59.6 L h(-1) m(-2)), also economically sustainable in time owed to minimization of the fouling-build up rate (0.91 h(-1)). Moreover, these conditions also provided high feed recovery (90%) and significant rejection efficiencies for the electroconductivity (58.1%) and organic matter (76.1%). This led to a purified permeate stream exiting the NF membrane operation exhibiting average EC and COD values equal to 1.4 mS cm(-1) and 45 mg L(-1). This permits complying with the water quality parameters established by different regulations for discharge public waterways and irrigation purposes.

Effective treatment of olive mill effluents from two-phase and three-phase extraction processes by batch membranes in series operation upon threshold conditions

Production of olive oil results in the generation of high amounts of heavy polluted effluents characterized by extremely variable contaminants degree, leading to sensible complexity in treatment. In this work, batch membrane processes in series comprising ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) are used to purify the effluents exiting both the two-phase and tree-phase extraction processes to a grade compatible to the discharge in municipal sewer systems in Spain and Italy. However, one main problem in applying this technology to wastewater management issues is given by membrane fouling. In the last years, the threshold flux theory was introduced as a key tool to understand fouling problems, and threshold flux measurement can give valuable information regarding optimal membrane process design and operation. In the present manuscript, mathematical approach of threshold flux conditions for membranes operation is addressed, also implementing proper pretreatment processes such as pH-T flocculation and UV/TiO2 photocatalysis with ferromagnetic-core nanoparticles in order to reduce membranes fouling. Both influence the organic matter content as well as the particle size distribution of the solutes surviving in the wastewater stream, leading, when properly applied, to reduced fouling, higher rejection and recovery values, thus enhancing the economic feasibility of the process.