A new decanter centrifuge, called Eureka, of the pate generation was studied in two different configurations (with and without water added) to evaluate its performance parameters. Mathematical models were developed to predict the extraction efficiency and the oil content in the husk, wastewater and pate as a function of the olive paste mass flow rate. The suitability of the mathematical models of the performance parameters was evaluated using various statistical parameters, such as the mean percentage error, the mean bias error, the root mean square error, the modelling efficiency and the chi-square test. The models developed showed excellent generalisation capabilities. The decanter was shown to be able to process olive paste with a high extraction efficiency that, without water added, could reach 92.5%; sufficiently dry solids and olive oil clarified by light solids were produced in both of the configurations studied. The decanter was also demonstrated to be able to switch from one configuration to the other without stopping operation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.