Machine Improves Yield in Trial Runs by Hitting Olive Paste With Electricity

The agri­cul­ture sec­tor is well on its way toward a third rev­o­lu­tion and tech­nol­ogy is the dri­ving force.

Simon Blackmore, an engi­neer at Harper Adams University in the United Kingdom told the jour­nal Nature, that all types of dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies are increas­ing small farm­ers’ pro­duc­tion capac­i­ties and cut­ting costs.

“We can make crop pro­duc­tion sig­nif­i­cantly more effi­cient and more sus­tain­able,” he said.

OliveCEPT, a machine that pro­vides an addi­tional step in the olive oil extrac­tion process, is among these new tech­nolo­gies that many in the sec­tor are hope­ful will lead to higher olive oil yields at lower costs for both small-scale and large-scale pro­duc­ers.

According to Johan Möllerström, the CEO of the Swedish com­pany that has designed and launched OliveCEPT, the new tech­nol­ogy that helps pro­duc­ers max­i­mize their yields by adding another step to the stan­dard olive oil pro­duc­tion line.

“The tra­di­tional extrac­tion process will not get all the oil out of the olive paste,” Möllerström told Olive Oil Times. ​“We are increas­ing the effi­ciency of the process.”

OliveCEPT is a machine looks like a large white rec­tan­gle stand­ing on one end, with Arc Aroma’s blue logo painted on the side and four swivel­ing wheels at the bot­tom. The tech­nol­ogy is cur­rently being tested by ten pro­duc­ers in Greece, Italy, Morocco and Spain.

“We are very con­fi­dent that we are pro­vid­ing ben­e­fits to the client,” Möllerström said.

The machine, which he touts for its energy effi­ciency, runs day and night dur­ing the har­vest and is inserted between the malax­ing and extrac­tion steps. Olive paste from the malaxer enters one side of the OliveCEPT, which breaks down the cell walls of the olive flesh, releas­ing more oil that then flows into the extrac­tor.

“We are doing that with the tech­nol­ogy of pulse elec­tri­cal fields,” Möllerström said. ​“That means that we are cre­at­ing a volt­age and elec­tric field in the cham­ber. When we are doing that we attract par­ti­cles in a sed­i­ment grain and break down the cell walls, which max­i­mizes the oil yield.”

Möllerström claims that the tech­nol­ogy increases oil yields any­where from five to 15 per­cent and, so far, the results have borne his claim out.

Maurizio Servili, a pro­fes­sor in the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at the University of Puglia, has worked on the project with Möllerström from the begin­ning. He said that in tests run by the uni­ver­sity, OliveCEPT has increased yields by five per­cent.

“The impact of the pulsed elec­tri­cal field tech­nol­ogy applied to the olive oil mechan­i­cal extrac­tion process showed a sig­nif­i­cant impact on extra vir­gin olive oil yield,” he said. ​“The yield increase was deter­mined to at least five per­cent com­pared to the ref­er­ence extrac­tion where the pulsed elec­tri­cal field tech­nol­ogy has not been applied.”

Emilio Conti, the qual­ity man­ager at Frantoio Conti, praised the tech­nol­ogy in a YouTube video, high­light­ing both the increased quan­tity and qual­ity of his yield, in terms of fla­vor pro­file, polyphe­nol con­tent and aes­thet­ics.

“We have con­firmed the results and the yield of our olive oil increased by four to six per­cent,” he said. ​“A bet­ter qual­ity of our oil is extracted as it increases the color of the oil, so if we have a green, it is more intense green. If we have a yel­low it’s more intense yel­low.”

“As for the fruiti­ness, it increases by about one point,” he added. ​“We also have a sig­nif­i­cant increase in polyphe­nols, between 100 and 150 ppm.”

Möllerström said that increas­ing polyphe­nol counts was not exactly what OliveCEPT was meant to do, but is a wel­comed side effect of the process.

“This is a pos­i­tive side effect of the treat­ment of get­ting more olive oil out of the process,” he said. ​“We thought we would have that. You never know, but we are glad we had this type of side effect.”

While OliveCEPT is only now being used in a lim­ited man­ner across the four afore­men­tioned coun­tries, Arc Aroma has also been test­ing the prod­uct in the Southern Hemisphere, with trial runs tak­ing place in both Argentina and Chile.

After four years to tweak the prod­uct, Möllerström said that he was get­ting pos­i­tive feed­back and will con­tinue look­ing for clients, both large and small.

“I think we are cre­at­ing great value for olive oil extrac­tion cus­tomers,” he said. ​“It’s quite a low invest­ment and a short pay­back time for the tech­nol­ogy.”

Arc Aroma also uses sim­i­lar tech­nol­ogy in wine, beer and juice pro­duc­tion.

• Arc Aroma