Development of a new process to treat the solid and liquid by-products of olive oil industry to recovery biophenols and to reduce the environmental charge of the wastes

The aim of this work consists in verifying technical and practical feasibility of a two treatment approaches to olive industry by-products : olive mill wastewaters (OMW), and Olive leaves in order to recovery purified polyphenols and reduce at the same time the environmental impact related to the disposal of these matrices. Membrane filtration techniques as: microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO), are adopted as main technological approach, in a sequential manner. The treatment process of raw matrices solid ones (olive leaves) and liquid ones (OMW) are conducted in two different ways: †¢ OMW Chemical and Enzymatic pre-treatment followed by sequential tangential filtration (MF, UF, NF, OI) †¢ Olive Leaves water extraction followed by sequential tangential filtration. (MF, OI) Both processes allows to recovery liquid polyphenol enriched fractions and ultrapure water. Process fractions most interesting for commercial exploitation were characterized and analyzed.