The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability of pulsed electric field (PEF) technology to improve the extractability and enhance the oil quality in an industrial olive oil extraction process. Using a PEF device on olive pastes significantly increased the extractability from 79.5% for the control, up to 85.5%. The PEF system did not modify the primary legal quality parameters or total concentrations of phenols, aldehydes, and esters. On the contrary, the non-thermal treatment slightly enhanced the dialdehydic forms of decarboxymethyl elenolic acid linked to hydroxytyrosol (3,4-DHPEA-EDA) and tyrosol (p-HPEA-EDA), and decreased the total saturated and unsaturated C5 and C6 alcohols of the PEF EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) compared to the control test. This study confirmed that PEF technology can improve olive oil extraction and quality.

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The use of a heat exchanger for the conditioning of the olive paste could enhance the olive oil extraction process. Particularly, paste pre-heating could reduce the malaxation time and, most of all, improve the temperature control during this process (e.g., 27 °C). In this study, a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of a tubular heat exchanger was carried out to better understand the influence of the inlet conditions of the olive paste on thermal and hydrodynamic behavior within it. CFD analysis was performed with SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation (ver.2016). The heat exchanger consists of a tube-in-tube module, in which the inner tube was fed with the olive paste, while the jacket was filled of hot water. The main aim was that to predict the heat transfer and pressure drop in paste side of the exchanger. Multiple analyses by varying the mass flow rate and inlet temperature of the paste were carried out, and temperature and pressure drop were estimated. The numerical model has proved very useful in identifying the main factors affecting the optimization of the heat exchanger in order to improve the extraction process of the olive paste.

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