I've been pondering this too. Considering there's only a limited solubility of the acid in the ethyl acetate it would require a mere teaspoon or so of lime for neutralization.

Stirring the acidified EA with some sodium bicarbonate powder might be a gentle way of removing the citric acid without hydrolysing the EA.

The trouble is the main hydrolysis product carried over in the spent ethyl acetate, ethanol, which is exceedingly difficult to remove as the boiling points are too close. Ethanol will continually accumulate in the EA the more it is reused until at some point it fails to separate from the lime paste because of ethanol's miscibility with water. It seems reasonable to suspect this has already been observed in some of the trials with longer pull times. Prolonged contact with the lime paste leads to increased hydrolysis of the EA.

EDIT: another thing that springs to mind (maybe I'm getting repetitive) is that calcium acetate forms a gel with ethanol. A surface layer of calcium acetate (from hydrolysis of EA) on the lime would also absorb ethanol from the hydrolysis. The more ethanol present in the (re-used) EA, the worse this would get. It's easy - for me at least - to imagine how this gel (which, incidentally, is sold as fuel gel) would also absorb the EA and make separation troublesome. It would be desirable to perform test on the absorption of EA by calcium acetate/ethanol gel. I really need to get hold of some EA.

By way of comparison, in principle butanol would be easier to remove from butyl acetate should that solvent prove to be an effective alternative to EA. Further tests are in the pipeline.

This sentiment resonates most strongly!