Monitoring and optimal management approaches to reduce water and energy consumption in milk processing processes

This paper proposes a methodology for the monitoring and optimal management of milk processing processes to reduce water and energy consumption. First, the key variables that should be measured to characterize the water/energy consumption are identified. Then, a monitoring system that is integrated with the current SCADA system already deployed in the production process has been developed that is able to evaluate the energy consumptions not directly computed from the available sensors. From real historical measurement records of the different subprocesses, their efficiency is determined. This information is used for developing an optimal management system that allows reducing the water/energy consumption. The work presented in this paper has been developed in the context of the European project named EnReMilk that aims to introduce significant water and energy in several milk processing processes by the introduction of new processing and management technologies. The assessment the proposed approach is based on the comparison with the current baseline consumptions.