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The liquids (oil and natural water) can be separated from the pulp by using pressure, centrifuges or the Sinolea® system, the one we use. This method is based on a very simple law of physics: liquids with different molecular cohesion have different surface tensions. Therefore, when a blade is plunged into a mixture of oil and water, only the oil sticks to the blade, thus separating the oil from the pulp without using pressure. The machine which does this is called a Sinolea®. It has 7000 stainless steel blades which penetrate the mashed olives slowly and continuously. Every time the blades emerge they bring with them a small quantity of very pure oil containing practically no water. It is easily understandable that by not applying any pressure, the best results are achieved and the oil flows fresh and fragrant. Under normal conditions the Sinolea® extracts between 60 and 80% of the oil. The method used by other mills is employed by us only to extract the last 20 to 40%. So our second grade oil is of the same standard as the first grade oil from other mills. Obviously this process takes at least three times longer than the others and is consequently more costly, but we feel that it is time and money well
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To understand the principle of his operation we can resort to this simple experiment: We take two glasses and we fill the number 1 with 2/3 of water and the rest of oil; the other is void. We now dip a steel blade (spoon or knife) in the glass 1 containing water and oil and let's make to drip it on the empty glass 2. If we have patience to repeat this operation a lot of times we will succeed in moving the whole oil to the empty glass 2: water will remain in the glass 1.
