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.