Surrey researchers to help turn Europe’s olive mill waste into bioproducts and clean fuel

As the world’s largest producer of olive oil, the EU faces a significant environmental challenge in managing the vast volumes of waste generated in production. Known as olive mill waste (OMW), this includes pomace, stones and leaves. Improper disposal can lead to soil degradation, water pollution and damage to local ecosystems. 

Running for four years with almost €4 million in funding from Horizon Europe, the project will create a fully integrated, zero-emission biorefinery to convert this waste into valuable bioproducts, including bioplastics, biofertilizers, biopesticides, plant bio-immunostimulants and bioenergy. The biorefinery will use green chemistry and microbial processes to recover resources while minimising emissions, noise and odours. 

The University of Surrey’s contribution is to design and implement the System Digital Twin (SDT) – a virtual model of the biorefinery’s waste treatment and energy flows. Researchers will input data from other parts of the project and use machine learning, validated against real-world experiments and physics-based models, to ensure accuracy. 

Once built, the SDT will enable the team to simulate the biorefinery’s operations and deliver continuous optimisation, making the plant more efficient, cost-effective, and reducing its carbon footprint. 

The project held its kick-off meeting in Rome in June 2025, with the team starting work in close collaboration with an Italian olive mill that also operates a biogas plant – laying the groundwork for the fully integrated biorefinery. 

The consortium spans four European universities, including Sapienza, Padua, Cranfield, Burgos, and Surrey; three research centres (Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology, Research Institutes of Sweden, and Rise Processum), industrial biorefinery Agrolio-Agroenergy, and the open innovation cluster CLIC Innovation Oy. 

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Notes to editors