Olive Oil Extraction - Part 3

Sinolea
The Sinolea method to extract oil from the olives was introduced in 1972; in this process, rows of metal discs or plates are dipped into the paste; the oil preferentially wets and sticks to the metal and is removed with scrapers in a continuous process. It’s based on the different surface tension of the vegetation water and the oil, these different physical behaviors allow the olive oil to adhere to a steel plaque while the other two phases stay behind.

Sinolea works by continuously introducing several hundreds of steel plaques in to the paste thus extracting the olive oil. This process is not completely efficient leaving a large quantity of oil still in the paste, so the remaining paste has to be processed by the standard modern method (industrial decanter).

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages
Higher polyphenol content of oil
Low temperature method
Automated
Low labor
Oil/water separation step is not needed
Low energy requirement

Disadvantages
Often must be combined with one of the above methods in order to maximize oil extraction which requires more space and labor.

Large surface areas can lead to rapid oxidation of the olive product

Sale of future machines currently outlawed in the European Union due to difficulty in cleaning large surface areas.

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Seaweed in Olive Oil

- Scott Patton