Almazara 4.0

Project "Almazara 4.0" data sheet

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 Project objective

Olive oil’s nutritional and healthy qualities have positioned it as one of the fastest growing segments of the global food industry and its quality is regulated by EC and the International Olive Council based on different chemical and organoleptic markers. Thus in order to obtain the best quality during the extraction process, only mechanical actions are applied with no use of chemical solvents during the separation process, reducing the yield of the process which lowers significantly the margins for producers. Current solutions for ensuring highest overall extraction process efficiency and oil quality are off-line, time consuming and costly. Thus, there is a strong need for an in-line monitoring solution capable to produce rapid adjustments of the different production steps. Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy has emerged as a rapid and non- invasive tool for such purposes. Nevertheless, commercialized NIR technologies fail to integrate a control solution of the extraction process efficiency. Almazara 4.0 is the first smart NIR system able to improve the efficiency of the extraction process by 35% in average, saving around €60k/olive mill per campaign. We have demonstrated through laboratory tests  that our intelligent sensor can regulate the operation of the centrifuge decanter to achieve the maximum extraction of olive oil, while monitoring in-line the olive oil quality (free acidity and oxidation state) and its healthy organoleptic markers (phenolic content). This will save the mill’s operators considerable time and money while providing them valuable information about quality and healthy content in their olive oil production at any given time. In this regard, we deliver a ground-breaking product supporting “resource-efficient and cost-effective solutions to secure sufficient supplies of safe, healthy and high quality food” towards meeting “Sustainable and competitive agri-food sector for a safe and healthy diet” societal challenge addressed by Horizon 2020.