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The dairy industry is one of the growing sectors in the food industry with significant thermal energy demand for their processes and temperature requirement of maximum 200 ℃. The use of solar energy for those process will reduce the fossil fuel dependency, greenhouse gas emission, environmental pollution and help to meet emission targets. Therefore, this study investigates the thermal requirements of a dairy company and provides a schematic of two integration concepts between the solar thermal energy system and their processes which are through the common energy supply line and inlets of individual processes. The study involves a case study that uses natural gas-powered boilers, and electrical powered chiller, ice banks and refrigerators to meet heating and cooling energy demand for the processes such as pasteurisation, fermentation and cold milk tanks. The overall energy consumption of the dairy processes is 1315 kWh at the full capacity operation, of which 1195 kWh can be theoretically replaced by the solar thermal energy. The temperature requirements of the processes are between 0 ℃ and 4 ℃ for cooling, and 170 ℃ for the heating. These thermal requirements can be met by using either parabolic trough or linear Fresnel solar thermal collectors along with thermal energy storage. The solar thermal energy integration concepts developed at supply level and process level use steam drum and absorption chiller to transfer the solar energy to the processes. The supply level integration has more advantages due to its easier control over the conventional and solar energy systems.

The dairy industry is one of the growing sectors in the food industry with significant thermal energy demand for their processes and temperature requirement of maximum 200 ℃. The use of solar energy for those process will reduce the fossil fuel dependency, greenhouse gas emission, environmental pollution and help to meet emission targets. Therefore, this study investigates the thermal requirements of a dairy company and provides a schematic of two integration concepts between the solar thermal energy system and their processes which are through the common energy supply line and inlets of individual processes. The study involves a case study that uses natural gas-powered boilers, and electrical powered chiller, ice banks and refrigerators to meet heating and cooling energy demand for the processes such as pasteurisation, fermentation and cold milk tanks. The overall energy consumption of the dairy processes is 1315 kWh at the full capacity operation, of which 1195 kWh can be theoretically replaced by the solar thermal energy. The temperature requirements of the processes are between 0 ℃ and 4 ℃ for cooling, and 170 ℃ for the heating. These thermal requirements can be met by using either parabolic trough or linear Fresnel solar thermal collectors along with thermal energy storage. The solar thermal energy integration concepts developed at supply level and process level use steam drum and absorption chiller to transfer the solar energy to the processes. The supply level integration has more advantages due to its easier control over the conventional and solar energy systems.

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SHINE

This work is partially funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades de España (RTI2018-093849-B-C31 - MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) and the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades - Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) (RED2018-102431-T). The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group (2017 SGR 1537). GREiA is a certified agent TECNIO in the category of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia. This work is partially supported by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme. This project has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the No 764025 (SWS-Heating). Alicia Crespo would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the FI-SDUR grant from the AGAUR of the Generalitat de Catalunya and Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca del Departament d’Empresa i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya.