A new super efficient evaporation plant to produce whey concentrate from milk by the application of Mechanical Vapour Recompression, has been supplied and installed by Niro Denmark at the Olbernhau dairy in Germany. Whey concentrate is an important product for the Olberhau dairy with roughly 50 tonnes being produced every day. The concentrate is used in a wide variety of food products including chocolate and baby food.
The new plant incorporates a Mechanical Vapour Recompressor fan system to compress the vapours from the liquor which are then used as an energy source. Only the fan requires electrical power with the rest of the process being powered by heat from the recompressed vapours. The large quantities of steam and cooling water that were needed to run the old Thermal Vapour plant are no longer required, resulting in huge energy savings.
Olbernhau Dairy explained, “With the old plant we needed about two million litres of heating oil a year to operate. The new Niro plant only uses around 300,000 litres, that means a reduction of 1000 tonnes of carbon-dioxide (CO2) every year being discharged into the atmosphere, and of course enormous cost savings for the dairy.”
Installing the new 1.2 million Euro plant was no easy task for the Niro engineers. The giant machinery weighing 26 tonnes had to be lifted into the building through an opening in the roof and took eight weeks to fully install.