The German firm, GEA is all set to build most environmentally-friendly plant in Asia at Gandhinagar, Gujarat for AmulFed Dairy which is a unit of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) popularly know as Amul.
GEA is slated to provide a turnkey dairy plant that will produce 150 tn/day of skim milk powder and 120 tn/day of dairy whitener/baby food. AmulFed’s plant will have a milk processing capacity of 90,000 litres/hr. This plant is scheduled to start production in 2018.
Some features of the yet-to-be-constructed plant that make it environmentally-friendly are:-
- -The use of a Mechanical Vapor Re-compression (MVR) system from GEA to continuously recycle energy by re-compressing the vapor within the evaporator. This reduces energy costs and the CO2 footprint to minimize the environmental load.
- -The use of a Reverse Osmosis (RO) polisher to treat the milk condensate from the evaporation plant and recycle the water for reuse within the plant. This significantly reduces water usage and approaches zero liquid discharge concept.
- -The application of a GEA clarifying separator to remove the entire life cycle of bacteria from the milk, thereby ensuring a supply of bacteria-free healthy milk throughout the process cycle.
- -The inclusion of GEA SANICP bag filters in series with cyclones to collect powder fines, save product, and reduce emissions to the atmosphere.
- -The inclusion of a GEA sifter to provide a uniform distribution of the powder particulates and, therefore, a more homogenous final product.
- -It will also be equipped with powder packing and a conveying system from GEA.
- -The plant will be designed to operate in fully automated mode. This includes the powder production, conveying, storage, packing, final packed product conveying and a complete management information system.
The project’s price-tag was not disclosed.