Life cycle assessment of the most representative virgin olive oil production systems in Tunisia

Towards the Integral Valorization of Olive Pomace‐Derived Biomasses through Biorefinery Strategies

“…2 shows representative block diagrams of the extraction of virgin olive oil and the mass balances, according to the literature. This will mainly depend on the water added to the process and the decanter type 10, 13, 29, 30. Moreover, examples of images of olive pomace and the derived biomasses are illustrated in Fig.…”

“…Besides the aforementioned ways of extracting olive oil, another practice is to use the percolation system in the separation step, but it is not common 6. Moreover, double extraction (two sequential centrifugation steps) of olive oil is commonly applied in some countries like Spain and Tunisia to increase profit 6, 10. For example, a practice in Tunisia combines two‐phase and three‐phase extraction.…”

“…For example, a practice in Tunisia combines two‐phase and three‐phase extraction. The latter is applied to recover around 40–50 % of the olive oil remaining in the two‐phase olive pomace 10. A partial destoning of the two‐phase olive pomace is also achieved in Spain 6, either in the oil mill or in the olive pomace oil extraction industry.…”

“…(a) Olive oil production and top producing countries 4, (b) type of extraction systems used for the production of olive oil according to previous studies 10, 12, 37, 150–152.…”

“…Alternatively, Tunisia has increased the extraction capacity using continuous extraction systems since the late 80s, but it mainly uses the three‐phase process. For example, in this country, the three‐phase extraction systems represent 59 % of the production and produce about 78 % of the olive oil national volume 10.…”