4-8 July 2016
Kramer Law building
Africa/Johannesburg timezone
<a href="http://events.saip.org.za/internalPage.py?pageId=10&confId=86">The Proceedings of SAIP2016</a> published on 24 December 2017

Performance evaluation of a direct expansion bulk milk cooler on a dairy farm in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa

6 Jul 2016, 16:10
1h 50m
Kramer Law building

Kramer Law building

UCT Middle Campus Cape Town
Board: F.270
Poster Presentation Track F - Applied Physics Poster Session (2)

Speaker

Mr Russel Mhundwa (University of Fort Hare Institute of Technology)

Please indicate whether<br>this abstract may be<br>published online<br>(Yes / No)

YES

Level for award<br>&nbsp;(Hons, MSc, <br> &nbsp; PhD, N/A)?

PhD

Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)?

YES

Main supervisor (name and email)<br>and his / her institution

MSimon@ufh.ac.za

Abstract content <br> &nbsp; (Max 300 words)<br><a href="http://events.saip.org.za/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=0&confId=34" target="_blank">Formatting &<br>Special chars</a>

This paper presents the performance evaluation of a direct expansion bulk milk cooler (BMC) used on a dairy farm in the Eastern Cape. The study was carried out on an existing dairy farm with an average of 800 cows in milking. The study focused on establishing the performance of BMC by the South African National Standards (SANS) 708:2007 for BMC’s tanks. The performance evaluation of the BMC’s considered morning and afternoon milking periods at an everyday collection of milk. A data acquisition system was installed to measure power consumption, the temperature of raw milk before cooling commences, the BMC room temperature, relative humidity, and ambient temperature. The volume of milk produced per every milking time was extracted from the on-farm records from fourth quadrant software. The cooling capacity of the BMC was determined for the two different milking times. The study revealed that an average of 60% of the day's milk extracted during the first milking. During this first milking, raw milk at an average temperature of 32°C attained a storage temperature of 4°C in 3 hours inclusive of the milking time. Also, after the last milking, the BMC operated for an average duration of 1.5 hours to before the raw milk attained the safe storage temperature. This short duration of cooling was owing to the slightly lower temperature lift of the stored milk from the storage temperature and also because of the volume of milk during that milking time which was lower than that of the morning milking time. The cooling capacity of the bulk milk tank was reduced due to an increased ambient temperature. Also, lower relative humidity increased the cooling capacity of the BMC and a decrease in the room temperature for the BMC lowered the cooling duration for the milk.

Apply to be<br> considered for a student <br> &nbsp; award (Yes / No)?

NO

Primary author

Mr Russel Mhundwa (University of Fort Hare Institute of Technology)

Co-authors

Dr Michael Simon (FHIT) Mr Stephen Loh Tangwe (Fort Hare Institute of Technology, University of Fort Hare)

Presentation Materials

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