Dairyworks Cheese Factory, Hornby: Inventive "container solution" for dairy factory expansion.
Compressed Air for Dairy Factories
Within dairy manufacturing plants, compressed air is utilized extensively as both a physical force and a direct process medium.
What are some common uses of compressed air in dairy factories?
- Agitation and Mixing: Compressed air is bubbled through raw milk in storage tanks to agitate the liquid, and it is used to power mixing machines for blended products like ice cream.
- Conveying and Line Clearing: It is used to convey milk and whey powders through the facility and to clear transfer lines of excess product.
- Valves and Packaging: Pneumatic systems actuate valves that control product batching and distribution. Compressed air also powers conveyor belts, operates vacuum-sealing equipment, blow-molds packaging containers, and sanitizes packaging machinery.
- Sterile Air Barriers: In the production of yogurt and fruit processes, compressed air can be used to provide a sterile air barrier for end products.
- Nitrogen Generation: Compressed air serves as the primary feed gas for on-site nitrogen generation systems (using pressure swing adsorption or membrane technologies). The nitrogen is essential for Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) to displace oxygen in infant formula cans or milk powder bags, preventing oxidation and extending shelf life
What products and services are popular for dairy factories?
- Rotary Screw Compressors: Dairy factories often use a high volume of compressed air to power a number of processes throughout the factory, making screw compressors a highly efficient method of air delivery.
- Oil-free Air Compressors: Dairy factories are subject to rigid food safety standards, and it is vital that compressed air is completely free of any contaminants such as oil, especially when the air is coming in direct contact with products. Oil-free compressors provide peace-of-mind in knowing the compressed air is completely free from contaminants.
- Advanced Air Treatment: To help ensure clean, pure air, dairy factories will used advanced filtration systems to remove oil, dirt, and water particles from their compressed air.
- Desiccant Dryers: Compressed air being used for the production of milk powders and similar needs to be completely free of moisture to ensure product quality is not compromised. Desiccant dryers can achieve pressure dewpoints as low as −70 °C, ensuring airlines are free from condensation.
- Heat Recovery Systems: A large portion of the energy used by a compressor is lost as heat. With heat recovery systems, you can recover up to 96% of this energy to use for space heating or water heating. As dairy factories often use a lot of compressed air, it just makes sense to recover as much of this energy as possible, not only to save on power costs, but also to reduce emissions.
- Leak Detectors: The most common cause of inefficiencies in a compressed air system are hidden air leaks. As dairy factories often prioritise efficiency, it's beneficial to be able to identify and manage air leaks in-house.
- Air Audits: Dairy factories looking to reduce power usage will want to ensure their air compressors are running as efficiently as possible. Regular air demand analysis and air leak surveys can help save up to 30% of power usage. Air quality testing is also important to ensure compliance with food safety standards.
- Preventative Maintenance: Regular maintenance of compressed air equipment helps to protect against breakdowns and unwanted downtime and assures longevity of equipment. Dairy factories are high users of compressed air, often with multiple compressors, so maintenance plans are great for ensuring maintenance is managed effectively, and splitting maintenance costs into manageable monthly payments.
- Nitrogen Generators: Nitrogen is often used in the packaging of dairy products to maintain freshness and extend shelf-life. Nitrogen generators allow dairy factories to access on-demand nitrogen at purities up to 99.999% without the added costs, delivery timeframes, and safety concerns of bottled nitrogen.
Blogs
List of Services
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Avoiding the Inevitable: Why Preventative Maintenance is Vital for Air CompressorsList Item 1
Skipping routine compressor maintenance often leads to faster wear, unexpected failures, production stoppages, reduced efficiency, and hefty repair bills.
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Elevate your Compressed Air Quality with Festo's MS SeriesList Item 2
Achieving the right air purity takes both expertise and flexible technology. The Festo MS series offers exactly that, with it's innovative, modular solutions.
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Finding the Invisible: How Systematic Air Leak Detection Transforms Efficiency and SustainabilityList Item 3
When businesses review their power usage to find out where money is being wasted, often one of the biggest culprits (and easiest to address) is compressed air leaks.
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From Bottles to Built-in: How On-Site Nitrogen Slashes Costs and DowntimeList Item 4
Discover how switching to a nitrogen generator allows you to reduce costs, improve reliability, and create a safer, more efficient plant.
Case Studies
Testimonials
“They’re our service providers for all our pneumatics and compressor needs. They power the pneumatic rams that contain the wireframes that cut our cheese. I go through PSL for all our Festo pneumatics maintenance because they know it well and that makes my life easier. We’ve worked together for 11 years and I can’t think of anyone who knows our systems as well as they do.”
Alastair Cone, Process Engineer
Dairyworks, Hornby
“I was the former maintenance manager with Anzco beef and lamb products processing plant. We used PSL Total Air as the main service providers and new installers of all our pneumatics, compressor and air dryer needs. They completely redid our airlines and installed a new compressor. I found them always good, easy to deal with and came up with good solutions.”
Colin Read
Anzco Foods
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