Characterisation & process control of pumping systems in the dairy industry : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Technology at Massey University
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Date
2000
DOI
Open Access Location
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Massey University
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Abstract
The interaction between control of pumping systems in the dairy industry and the performance of the process has been investigated. Pumping in a precooling system at Massey University No.1 Dairy Unit was chosen as a case study. The requirements of the precooling system were determined from previous work done by dairy technologists. Part of these requirements were that: i) microbial damage to milk must be minimised by good temperature control, specifically by cooling the milk down to 18°C immediately after milking as specified in the New Zealand Dairy Industry Farm Dairy Code of Practice (COP). ii) handling should be gentle to minimise damage to the milk fat globule membrane by avoidance of cavitation and foaming. However controlled pumping, which minimises damage to the fat globule membrane, has been reported to decrease the cooling capacity of the plate heat exchanger (PHE). The precooling system at No.1 Dairy Unit was modified to allow continuous monitoring of key process variables (temperatures, flows and pressures). These were logged continuously and automatically to allow analyses to be carried out for whole milking sessions. The analysis shows that the releaser pump in the precooling system at No.1 Dairy Unit was oversized. This resulted in the pump only operating for 10 to 50% of the time and consequent inefficient usage of cooling water. In general the average temperature of the milk entering the vat complied with the COP requirement. However, as a consequence of the pump control system, the instantaneous temperature at times exceeded the COP recommended temperature. The analysis showed that cooling of the milk held up in the PHE during the pump-off phase contributed significantly to the cooling performance of the system. The present set up of the releaser pump pumping regime is based on a fixed pump-on phase of 6 seconds. The pump starts when the milk level reached a predetermined level in the milk receiver tank, which holds the milk coming from the cows. The duration of the pump on phase was set so that there would always be a milk fluid head in the receiver tank; which was decided by the relative size of the pump and receiver tank. The present pumping regime did not make best use of the ability of the system to cool the milk held up in the PHE during the pump-off phase. By simply changing the pump-on phase to 3s, more milk could be held up during the pump off phase in the PHE, giving a 10% increase in efficiency in the use of the cooling capacity of the water. This was achieved without changing the size of the PHE or any additional capital investment. Synchronising the water with milk flow rate resulted in further gains in efficiency of cooling water usage but this resulted in an increase in the temperature of milk exiting the PHE. This conflict of goals made evident that an improvement in efficiency could only be attained by using cooler water, which could be achieved by additional equipment such as a cooling tower. However it is recommended that any modification to the process must be accompanied by a reanalysis of the performance of the system in conjunction with an appropriate control system to optimise the performance of the system.
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CD held with Reference copy
Keywords
Dairy processing, Pumping machinery, Process control