Application of Solar energy for sustainable Dairy Development

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