Dairy Crest cuts waste with ultrasonic monitoring

London - Dairy Crest in collaboration with Bradshaw Consulting have developed and installed a new effluent monitoring and analysis system for the dairy company’s processing site near Stroud in Gloucestershire. The turnkey system and meters provide online product wastage information from the various departments and so reduces milk wastage from the site.

Having considered various measurement alternatives, Dairy Crest opted for Micronics’ SLT32 ultrasonic non-contact open channel flow measurement system. This was selected for ease of installation and maintenance/service benefits of non-contact technology.

Three Micronics SLT32 meters were purchased as a package. The meters can measure and log effluent flow and totalised flow; though in this application they are providing flow data via a 4 to 20mA signal to the system's separate control system.

The meters have been installed at three known process discharge points to assess effluent discharge rates assuming flume characteristics. The Bradshaw system also analyses the effluent milk content to identify the milk wastage using a volume-turbidity (~ COD mg/l) calculation, which is further, analysed in terms of real time and day total data within the site SCADA system.

Site staff now monitor live effluent discharge rates, initiate action to investigate potential reductions in process milk wastage and view the results in real time or daily values. They are then able to identify and drive down milk wastage and effluent costs.