Energy optimization milk powder production and engineering special techniques powder tower and building milk processing.

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Through an expansion project, Milcobel has largely revamped the milk powder production and milk processing in Kallo to meet an ever-increasing demand. This quantum leap involved an investment of around 85 million euros and the construction of a new tower building.

Ingenium was involved from the outset and carried out an extensive energy study of the entire production process for producing milk powder as part of the environmental permit application for this expansion in Kallo. Ingenium was also closely involved in the engineering of the special technologies (including HVAC and electricity) in the powder tower and the milk processing building.

Based on a detailed study of the existing situation (evaporator, powder tower, and utilities) and a comparison with the best available techniques on the market, Ingenium has developed a more energy-efficient solution.

To obtain milk powder as an end product, after milk processing (including standardization, homogenization, pasteurization and sterilization), the milk is first thickened via a falling film evaporator. Next, this thickened milk is powdered in a spray dryer where the milk comes into contact with hot air blown into a cyclone. The powdered milk is collected and filled at the bottom of the spray dryer. The MVR technique (mechanical vapor recompression) was chosen primarily for the evaporation process. By using this technique, steam consumption is greatly reduced and the work is done with electrically driven blowers (equipped with highly efficient motors). Heating the drying air is done with an indirect gas-fired fan heater instead of a steam and condensate coil. In addition, the air is also preheated through a combined heat and power (CHP) system specifically provided for this process.

Furthermore, many adjustments were made to the product flow so that as much as possible both cold and heat is recovered during the process. Finally, the HVAC of the tower building was sized so that heat is removed in an energy-efficient manner via free-cooling.

The totality of all efficiency measures will yield a predetermined energy savings for milk powder production totaling about 20% or 6,900 tons of CO2 on an annual basis.