Low-cost empirical modelling to determine cooling savings in a dairy plant using a pre-cooler

Raw milk leaves the cow udder at 35°C-37°C and must be cooled rapidly to a storage temperature of 4°C so as to stop the microbial activity. As such bulk milk coolers (BMC's) are used to achieve the required storage temperature. This research focused on a low-cost empirical modeling to determine cooling savings on a dairy farm using a milk pre-cooler. A mathematical model was built with cooling water inlet temperature and outlet temperature of the raw milk to the BMC as the predictors for the electrical energy consumption of the BMC. A data acquisition was designed and built to measure the predictors of the electrical energy consumption of the BMC. Data analysis was done using Matlab software. The study revealed that an average of 39.6% savings on milk cooling can be achieved in dairy farms using a pre-cooler. A reliefF statistical test on predictors depicted that both the predictors are primary contributors to the desired output and a correlation coefficient of 0.987 indicated that there is a strong relationship between the actual and the modeled cooling savings. The findings from the empirical model will be used in future work on energy efficiency in the dairy sector for performance monitoring of the cooling system and optimization.