![]() Using the by-products from one industrial process to feed into another is known as the circular economy. ![]() However, it is possible to keep water within the dairy system and prevent these harmful impacts as well as saving resources, but first, you must identify where the water is used. One way to cut back the amount of water used by the dairy industry is to tackle the effluent, according to Dr Thomas Michael Scherer from the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology in Germany.Įffluent is the wastewater that comes out of a treatment plant, factory or industry and is often discharged into a river or the sea, also causing severe environmental consequences, such as vast dead zones in the oceans. In regions with a high concentration of milk production there are not just high levels of water use, but also of water pollution. ‘We want to offer an online calculator where dairies can enter their characteristics and get answers on how to make improvements,’ said Dr Glasner. To help other dairies become more efficient, SUSMILK will share the potential of these technologies at and offer another platform to identify ways to save resources. Image courtesy of Queizúar SL and SOLARFOCUS GmbH To reduce energy demand, researchers are looking at alternative methods, such as solar panels, to power dairy farms. ‘This milk concentrate could be very good for ice cream, cheese and yoghurt.’ ‘By reducing the volume of milk you can reduce the amount of trucks on the roads,’ said Dr Glasner. SUSMILK is also testing a technology to concentrate milk, thereby reducing dairies’ transport emissions. In a German dairy, they are testing a gas-driven and a high-temperature heat pump to evaluate energy savings. At another Spanish dairy, they are testing a chiller which takes in waste heat and uses this energy to power its refrigeration. They are testing combined solar and biomass heat systems to power parts of its facility. ![]() One of their dairies is in Spain and processes 50 000 litres per day and makes three types of cheese. ‘We see a lot of potential for improvements by using technology that can easily fit into the dairy industry,’ said Dr Glasner, who is also the project manager of SUSMILK. SUSMILK, an EU-funded project, is looking to save energy in the dairy industry by testing energy efficient and renewable technologies in different dairies across Europe. While some researchers are working to reduce the emissions from dairy cows themselves, others are looking to make an impact on the production side. Then there is the energy demand for equipment sterilisation and lighting as well as the transport of dairy products, which is always chilled. Pasteurising and processing raw milk into cheese, yoghurt, curd or fresh milk, to name just a few, all require different degrees of heating and cooling. ‘We would like to help the dairy industry, and food industry in general, to use less water – by reusing it.’ Dr Thomas Michael Scherer, Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology, Germany ‘Most of the energy in dairy is used for heating and cooling,’ said Dr Christoph Glasner from the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety, and Energy Technology in Germany. To put that into perspective, that’s enough to power Lithuania’s 1.35 million households for a year. Each year, around 140 million tonnes of raw milk is produced across Europe which requires an average energy input of 18 400 GWh.
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