72 | nzdairy DAIRY SERVICES » School of food Advanced Technology • to page 78 The solution to be the world’s best Prof Richard Archer of the School of Food and Advanced Technology at Massey University has a vision that one day the New Zealand dairy farm will act as though it is the first step of the World’s best milk handling system. It will take milk fresh from the milking machine, which will be warm and may have considerable air dispersed through it. It will certainly have some live micro-organisms, some live animal cells and may have active enzymes from the cow. Freshly harvested milk will be pumped from vacuum and have its air removed during 5 – 10 seconds residence in a deaerator. From there it is pumped quietly through a gentle heat exchanger to cool it to about 3° C before being bled into the bottom of a heavily insulated farm vat. “The spiral heat exchanger, deaerator and pump make up a compact small tower unit to plumb up to milk and service lines and a little power,” says Richard. “The farm vat will have a tiny stirrer at the bottom and nothing but a vent and spray ball up at the top. No one ever needs to go on the roof. Inspection hatch, stirrer, pipework and instruments are all in the cold crawl space below. That inspection hatch is bolted shut, opened once a year for inspection.” The large top vent is piped down to a generous air filter at eye level — its interior is CIPed daily, keeping the interior of the tank pretty much the same air quality as the inside of the factory. Milk is already cold when it arrives at the vat and may warm up 3° degrees over the next two days, but there’s no piece of wetted tank wall that is warm enough to grow a serious biofilm. The tanker can arrive at any moment, including during milking, and milk will be ready to pump out Richard Loader Refrigeration maintenance on farm.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDc2Mzg=