**3.1 Applications of membrane technology in the olive oil industry**

Membrane technology has been used in the edible oil industry for degumming, deacidification, waste water treatment, recovery of solvent from micelles, condensate return, catalyst recovery and hydrolysis or synthesis of structured lipids with two-phase membrane reactors, involving pigment removal, separation and concentration of minor compounds in the oil. Despite its use in other sectors of the edible oil industry, this technology has not been broadly extended to olive oil processing.
