Purification of olive mill wastewater phenols through membrane filtration and resin adsorption/desorption

Olive tree cultivation has a long history in the Mediterranean countries, and even today consists an important cultural, economic, and environmental aspect of the area. The production of olive oil through 3-phase extraction systems, leads to the co-production of large quantities of olive mill wastewater (OMW), with toxic compounds that inhibit its biodegradation. Membrane filtration has been used for the exploitation of this byproduct, through the isolation of valuable phenolic compounds. In the current work, a fraction of the waste occurring from a membrane process was used. More specifically the reverse osmosis concentrate, after a nanofiltration, containing the low-molecular-weight compounds, was further treated with resin adsorption/desorption. The non ionic XAD4, XAD16, and XAD7HP resins were implemented, for the recovery of phenols and their separation from carbohydrates. The recovered phenolic compounds were concentrated through vacuum evaporation reaching a final concentration of 378 g/L in gallic acid equivalents containing 84.8 g/L hydroxytyrosol.