Test & measurement REAL TIME A
MEASUREMENT HELPS DAIRIES CUT PRODUCT LOSS
s dairies scramble to meet sustain- ability targets ahead of the first year of reporting for the EU CSR Directive, the significant losses in push-out processes have been identified as low hanging fruit by many companies.
From 2025, listed companies in the EU with more than 500 employees will be required to report sustain- ability information according to the new mandatory European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). This requirement will be expanded over the coming years to cover further categories of companies. Product loss is a significant problem at many dairies and can have a large impact on the carbon footprint. Hundreds of liters of product is often lost to the drains when liquid product is displaced with water by pushing it from one processing step to another. Frequently, as much as one per cent of dairy production can be wasted in the push-out between product batches. For an average dairy plant processing 250,000 tons of raw milk annually, this means a loss of 2,500 tons
of raw milk, as well as unnecessary CO2 emissions upstream in the supply chain.
However, inaccurate measuring technologies frequently prevent operators from addressing this issue in an effective way, as it can be difficult to correctly identify the product that moves through the pipeline. But with appropriate measuring tech- nology, the end of one batch and the beginning of the next can be accurately located. If it is not, the small losses at each push-out point, of which there can be hundreds, accumulate and become
significant by the end of the process. Pipeline contents are commonly measured by one of the three technologies – flow meter, turbidity sensor or conductivity sensor. Flow meters estimate the arrival of the product at the push-out point based on the system flow rate; turbidity sensors monitor the interaction between a light beam and the liquid; and conductivity sensors operate by measuring the elec- trical conductivity of the liquid.
A fourth method is based on monitoring the dielec- tricity of the liquid, i.e. its ability to hold electric charge. This is achieved by using a sensor that accurately identifies the substance moving through the pipeline as a radiofrequency electromagnetic field is induced into the liquid. Different liquids have different dielectricity, making them distinguishable from each other, giving each liquid a unique fingerprint.
“Measuring the dielectric properties of the liquid provides significant advantages over traditional approaches. Flow meters have very low accuracy and turbidity sensors cannot distinguish transparent liquids, such as whey concentrate, from water, and become clogged by thick liquids, like cream. The electrical conductivity of milk-based products is close to that of water, which translates into low sensitivity for conduc- tivity sensors when detecting product interfaces,” says Matti Järveläinen, CEO of Collo, a leading manufac- turer of dielectric liquid analysing systems. “The dielectric sensor can detect any liquid, whether it is thin, thick, colored, colorless, opaque or transparent. This means that the same measuring tech- nology can be applied across the dairy plant, while in the past the plant needed to select the sensor based
on the type of liquids processed in each particular location,” adds Järveläinen.
One of the key benefits in Collo’s dielectric sensors is that the technology works with any liquid. Unlike turbidity sensors, it can accurately detect transparent, opaque and thick liquids, like whey concentrate or cream, from water, in addition to other milk-based and non-milk liquids.
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“A solution that can be scaled easily across the plant has been our goal from the start. We use sophisticated machine learning techniques to quickly calibrate our system to new liquids. The result is actionable informa- tion, like percentage of water in the product, which is transferred to the plant automation system, enabling process optimisation,” Järveläinen continues. Collo sensors were recently installed in four locations in the raw milk reception of a dairy plant processing 243 million liters of raw milk per year. The plant previ- ously used flow meters for controlling the push-outs. However, due to their low accuracy, what appeared to be optimal timing actually resulted in losses amounting to 600,000 liters per year. With the far higher accuracy of the dielectric sensor, 108 times better than the flow meter, losses were reduced to just 5,000 liters per year – a reduction by more than 99 per cent. The dairy has now decided to introduce Collo’s solution throughout the plant and to auto- mate the process.
Large dairy and other food producers are currently increasing their efforts to reduce their environmental impact
January 2025 Instrumentation Monthly
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