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A new research project in the European Union is inves­ti­gat­ing ways in which to use agri­cul­tural residues as an alter­na­tive source of pro­tein and phe­no­lic iso­lates.

The Pro-Enrich project is seek­ing to turn byprod­ucts cre­ated by the pro­duc­tion of rape­seed meal, olives, toma­toes and cit­rus fruit into these two iso­lates, which can be used instead of petro­leum-based prod­ucts in a range of every­day goods.

“The whole idea is to replace fos­sil-based sources of phe­no­lics and also cre­ate pro­teins that are com­ing from Europe rather than being imported from some­where else,” Matthew Schwarzkopf, a pro­fes­sor at the University of Primorska in Slovenia who is work­ing on the project, told Olive Oil Times.

The pro­tein and phe­no­lic iso­lates can be used in a range of prod­ucts from pet food and indus­trial resins to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and cos­met­ics.

So far, Pro-Enrich, which is part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and inno­va­tion pro­gram and has received fund­ing from the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking, has man­aged to cre­ate pro­tein replace­ments from the pro­duc­tion of rape­seed meal. These pro­tein replace­ments already have been used to make pet food and adhe­sives for a wood panel pro­duc­tion com­pany.

The group will not begin using byprod­ucts from the pro­duc­tion of olive oil in these types of processes until the 2019 har­vest sea­son begins in Slovenia. However, Schwarzkopf has already been to a local mill in Slovene Istria and gath­ered 200 liters of olive pomace and waste­water to be frozen and processed later in Denmark.

“I went to some olive mills and all of this waste mate­r­ial is really nasty, pol­luted and toxic,” he said. ​“But the stuff that makes it toxic is good for other things.”

These two byprod­ucts will be bro­ken down using enzy­matic degra­da­tion, which is done with microor­gan­isms, before being sep­a­rated and then fil­tered.

“They [the research team in Denmark] use an enzy­matic degra­da­tion of the waste mate­r­ial and this breaks down the cell walls of the olives and the pits,” Schwarzkopf said. ​“This helps when they do the wet extrac­tion.”

“Then they cen­trifuge every­thing to sep­a­rate the com­po­nents and do an ultra-fil­tra­tion,” he added. ​“This gives you exactly the mol­e­c­u­lar weights you are look­ing for, which helps you to iso­late the phe­nols and pro­teins.”

On top of the var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits that the project is seek­ing to have, Schwarzkopf also said that olive farm­ers and oil pro­duc­ers may stand to ben­e­fit finan­cially too.

“The whole idea of the project is to cre­ate a value chain,” Schwarzkopf said.

In the future, olive farm­ers may be able to sell their waste­water and olive pomace directly to com­pa­nies that will then bio-refine them into any one of the afore­men­tioned prod­ucts.

Currently, olive oil pro­duc­ers dump their waste­water, which is not toxic, into the sewer and either pay some­one to remove the olive pomace or com­post it to be used as fer­til­izer later on. Pomace can­not be used as a fer­til­izer right away due to its high lev­els of acid­ity, which require time and effort to oxi­dize in a com­post pile.

“If they get any money from this mate­r­ial, it is a ben­e­fit for them,” Schwarzkopf said. ​“At the very least, we come and take it and they don’t have to pay to get rid of it because it is con­sid­ered a waste mate­r­ial.”

At the moment, the project has only worked on pro­cess­ing 500 liters of agri­cul­tural residues at a time and once the ini­tial exper­i­men­ta­tion phase is over, they plan to scale up. If all goes accord­ing to plan, Pro-Enrich hopes to expand this project out­side of Slovenia to larger olive oil pro­duc­ing coun­tries.

The team is already work­ing with a large mill in Spain, which Schwarzkopf said is ideal because larger amounts of olive pomace and waste­water are con­cen­trated in one place. This would help to make the logis­tics of gath­er­ing and trans­port­ing these byprod­ucts eas­ier for actual com­pa­nies, which will even­tu­ally replace Pro-Enrich as the ones refin­ing the pomace and waste­water.

“I like this kind of project because it has so many indus­trial part­ners who are lead­ing the direc­tion of the research, which helps focus the project,” Schwarzkopf said.

In other words, work­ing with the indus­tries which will even­tu­ally pur­chase and refine these byprod­ucts increases the like­li­hood that olive farm­ers and oil pro­duc­ers will ben­e­fit finan­cially.

• Pro-Enrich