Statistical comparison of effluents from three olive oil extraction systems and their adverse effects on the ecosystem

Wastewater from olive oil mills pollutes the ecosystem and poses potential risks to soil and human health in terms of heavy metals. These effluents are discharged to the ecosystem by three types of olive oil extraction systems (modern continuous centrifugation system, modern discontinuous system, and traditional pressure system), which are compared with each other to explore which is more toxic. To do this, a factorial analysis including Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied with sampling adequacy validating the results by the Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin test (0.78) and Bartlett's significant test. The analysis revealed that the traditional discontinuous system is the more toxic of the two modern systems. As in the case of Zinc and Iron, they present average concentrations of 185.75±47.61 and 51.75±11.16 mg/L respectively, exceeding the required standards. These metal pollutants effectively degrade the ecosystem and pose problems in agriculture through bioaccumulation and inhibition of plant germination, with of course high acidity and high salinity factors inhibiting root growth and pre-existing vegetation.