Kinetic study of oil extraction from olive foot cake

Abstract

The kinetics of oil extraction from olive foot cake can be explained by a model based on two stages. The first step corresponds to a simple washing of the oil from the particle surface. In the second step, the extraction is controlled by two mechanisms: slow diffusion from broken cells and very slow diffusion from intact cells.The kinetic coefficients of this mathematical model are calculated using the experimental results obtained from hexane and commercial ethyl alcohol for different particle sizes.