Progress on green table olive processing with KOH and wastewaters reuse for agricultural purposes

Abstract

Table olive wastewaters are seriously polluting and a difficult to treat effluent worldwide, mainly due to their high content in sodium. An alternative approach could be the treatment of the olives with KOH instead of NaOH, in order to reuse the olive streams as biofertilizers. In this study, the debittering of olives with KOH was investigated at pilot plant scale in two olive seasons. The results indicated that a concentration between 1.7 and 2.0% of KOH (similar to that employed with NaOH) led to a fermented product with the same physicochemical and organoleptic characteristics than the traditional one. The spent lyes and washing waters from the KOH treatments were gathered and vacuum evaporated, giving rise to a concentrated solution rich in potassium (52 g/L) that was tested as biofertilizer in open tomato fields. Furthermore, the drip irrigation of the tomato plants with a combined olive solution and mineral fertilizer (NH4NO3) produced similar tomato yield and quality than the irrigation with only mineral fertilizer (NH4NO3 + KNO3). Overall, it has been demonstrated that Spanish-style green olives can be processed with KOH and the effluents valorized to be used as biofertilizer.