Reducing Waste and Wastewater in a Dairy Plant

The dairy industry involves processing raw milk into products such as market milk,butter, cheese, curd, condensed milk, dried milk (milk powder), and ice cream, using processes such as chilling, pasteurization, homogenization, evaporation and drying.Lot of water is used mainly to clean the equipment after these processes. Using more water than what is essential will produce excessive volumes of waste-water,which adds financial and ecological burdens to the processing plant and to the environment. There are many ways to reduce water use and waste water production, which will also eliminate many problems and costs associated with waste water.The wastage of product should be avoided. This will not only reduce the product losses but also reduces the organic matter load on wastewater treatment systems.

This can be achieved by adopting better production control measures as follows:

• Use of disposable packaging (or bulk dispensing of milk) instead of bottles where feasible.
•  Minimize spills of ingredients and of raw and finished product on the floor; always clean up the spills before washing.
•  Collection of waste product for use in lower grade products such as animal feed
• where this is feasible without exceeding cattle feed quality limits.
•  Optimization of use of water and cleaning chemicals; recirculation of cooling waters.
•  Segregation of effluents from sanitary installations, processing, and cooling(including condensation) systems; this facilitates recycling of wastewater.
•  Use of condensates instead of fresh water for cleaning.
•  Recovery of energy by using heat exchangers for cooling and condensing.
•  Use of high-pressure nozzles to minimize water usage.
•  Avoidance of the use of phosphorus-based cleaning agents. Removal of
• phosphorus from wastewater generally needs a special treatment process.
•  Minimizing losses of raw material and products by preventing tanks from overflowing, due to foam generation (for example in the separators).
•  Draining of milk residues from cans into special catch troughs.