Fermentation brines from Spanish style green table olives processing: treatment alternatives before recycling or recovery operations

Abstract

BACKGROUND Fermentation brine from Spanish style green table olives processing (FTOP) is characterized by very high conductivity (around 88 mS cm‐1), high values of suspended solids (near 1300 mg L‐1), chemical oxygen demand (around 17 900 mg L‐1) and total phenols (1000 mg L‐1). In this work, fermentation brines have been exhaustively characterized and pH adjustment–sedimentation, coagulation–flocculation–sedimentation and adsorption with activated carbon have been evaluated. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS The pretreatment selection will depend on the final FTOP management. If no polyphenols elimination is required in view of a further recovery, the best pretreatment is pH adjustment to 9 plus sedimentation. The removal efficiencies achieved were 33.1% suspended solids, 82.5% turbidity and only 10.4% of polyphenols. However, if the final FTOP treatment was biological, the best pretreatment is adsorption with powder active carbon, because this pretreatment implies the maximum reduction of phenols in FTOP, which inhibit microorganism activity in the biological process. The maximum total phenols removal efficiency was 96% with 8 g L‐1 of BM8 powder activated carbon (21% soluble COD). © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry

Table Olive Manufacturing Wastewater Treatment Using the Peroxymonosulfate/Fe(III) System

“…For instance, Aldana and coworkers reported a 20% COD elimination rate and 50% turbidity removal using effluent from a black table olive processing plant [14]. Ferrer-Polonio et al found a negligible COD reduction after applying commercial coagulants to wastewater from the production of green table olives; however, these authors used very low doses of the coagulants-flocculants tested [15].…”

“…Most of the works, however, are published on the effluents used in wastewater treatment from olive oil production [12], which have significantly different properties from the effluents generated in table olive production [15], including a higher organic load and much lower conductivity.…”

Integrated Membrane Process for the Treatment and Reuse of Residual Table Olive Fermentation Brine and Anaerobically Digested Sludge Centrate

“…A source of hypersaline streams can be the production of pickled fruits and vegetables. One of these generated effluents is the fermentation brine from table olive processing (FTOP), whose conductivity can reach 80 ms/cm and its chemical oxygen demand (COD) could be more than 15,000 mg/L [ 2 ].…”

“…The biological treatment is very complicated since salinity reduces the cellular activity significantly [ 3 ]. In the case of FTOP, the biodegradation of the organic matter is even slower due to the presence of phenolic compounds (around 1000 mg tyrosol eq·L −1 ) [ 2 ]. In this way, the start-up and operation of biological reactors treating this brine is very complicated [ 4 , 5 ].…”

Ultrafiltration of residual fermentation brines from the production of table olives at different operating conditions

“…Apart from the acid pH, the fermentation brine wastewater is also characterized by a high salt concentration (conductivity from to 95 mS•cm -1 ) and high soluble chemical oxygen demand (COD), of 15000 to 30000 mgO 2 •L -1 . Part of this organic matter corresponds to the phenolic compounds (these concentration varying from 1000 to 2000 mg of tyrosol equivalents•L -1 ) (García-García et al, 2011) (Ferrer-Polonio et al, 2014).…”