Application of Solar energy for sustainable Dairy Development

Abstract

At the time of independence milk production in India was only 17 million tones perannum. Today India has become number one in milk production, producing 127 milliontones per annum with approx. 20% of the total milk production is handled by theorganized sectors. Dairy and food industries are fast growing industries and day-by-daynewer technologies are being introduced to get better quality of foods. Use ofconventional energy is common practice for major processing of milk. At present all mostall dairy operations are performed using grid supply with diesel gen-set as backup. Milkprocurement system has changed in India and now milk is being procured by maintainingcold chain to improve its microbial quality. The village level co-operative societies for milkcollections are provided by bulk milk coolers operating on conventional grid supply ofelectricity and in case of unavailability of electric supply diesel generator sets are providedfor cooling the milk. To overcome the problem of continuous grid supply of electricityand diesel generator sets, solar based refrigeration system for milk cooling at society levelis quiet feasible. Most of the milk processing operations, room conditioning for milkproduct packaging and cold stores for milk & milk products are operating on grid electricsupply. To overcome problem of peak load penalty, the part load can be shared by solarbased vapour absorption system for such operations. The use of solar energy in the dairyis generally found for hot water supply to boiler, hot water generator for processing ofmilk or for CIP cleaning. The field level application of solar based refrigeration system formilk cooling and solar based vapour absorption system for commercial application formilk and milk related cooling operations and for room conditioning for cold stores andpackaging rooms for milk and milk products are minimum. There is an urgent need todevelop commercially viable solar based refrigeration system for such applications.The existing knowledge of refrigeration & air conditioning and solar energy will be appliedto design and develop energy efficient solar based refrigeration system for milk cooling atvillage level society and solar based vapour absorption system for milk and milk relatedcooling operations and for room conditioning for cold stores and packaging rooms formilk and milk products, to reduce peak load penalty. Use of solar energy has great scopefor its commercial use in the dairy processing operations as well as to design and developsolar based refrigeration systems for dairy industry.