Selection of Plant Equipment

Some of the important points for deciding equipments are detailed below:

a) Finalize the production technology,

b) Find out number of equipments with their capacities,

c) Finalize production line. Some plants have process sequence, whereas others are specific to products. Production line would be finalized according to the multiple use of processes and requirement of products having provision to get maximum benefits,

d) Look at the cleaning and sanitary provision to allow maintenance, cleaning, disinfection, monitoring and inspection.

e) The material of construction should be non-reactive, non-toxic and of food grade quality specially that coming in the direct contact of milk. It should be able to withstand heat treatment processes like heating and cooling. Materials of heat transferring equipment should be good heat conductors.

f) Wherever necessary, equipment should have provision for controlling and monitoring of temperatures, humidity, airflow and other parameters which,otherwise would be considered as detrimental to food safety.

g) Space requirement for equipment should be analyzed.

h) Utility requirements associated with the product and equipment.

i) Spacing between adjacent equipment and service pipelines to facilitate maintenance.

j) Develop flow diagram to identify sequence of operations and flow of materials.

k) Consider the housing requirement for each product and equipment. Some products need to be manufactured in controlled atmosphere and need proper building, whereas others manufactured within the equipment kept in open.Similarly some of the equipment requires proper housing and others need open air for their efficient operation.

In dairy industry you will find lot of examples to observe the above situations. For examples, ammonia condenser used in the refrigeration plant needs to be kept in open for maximum dissipation of heat, whereas milk vats need to be placed in the sanitary place with complete enclosure. While visiting a dairy plant one can have notice of such aspects.

a) Find out economy of material handling by using natural or gravity flow.

b) Find out operation economy by proper location of section or equipment. In other words, we should not place openings of low temperature or cold room directly facing to west if frequent openings are to be in the second half of the day. Similarly, openings or doors of high hygiene production area should not open towards the unhygienic area, without safety measure like air curtain or anti-room.After giving full considerations to above aspects, next planning step would be to design establishment for production and other facilities.