When milk is cooled in a cooling tank, the heat energy from the milk is transferred to the refrigerant fluid in the cooling system of the tank, resulting in hot refrigerant gas.  To close the cooling circle, the gas than needs to be cooled down again. This is achieved by the condensers of the cooling unit, which traditionally would just “fan off” the heat to the surrounding air. This is of course a large waste of energy! That’s why we at Wedholms have developed Interpac, an efficient heat recovery system that makes it possible to use the heat energy from the milk to heat water for the farm’s use. This will save the environment and result in appreciable economical savings for the farmer. The heated water can be stored in a water tank and used for a wide range of purposes on the farm e.g. cleaning of the cooling tank, cleaning of the milking equipment or surrounding areas or heating of buildings with water based heating systems.

In the picture a brand new cooling installation with a 20,000 liters horizontal cooling tank, installed on a conventional dairy farm in Poland. Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship farm is one of the biggest farms in Poland, with about 1,000 cows. The tank is equipped with Interpac heat recovery system, including four heat recovery units and a 1,000 liters water tank. As the milk room is not ready yet, the heat recovery system is installed in open air. Still, the temperature in the water tank is almost 60 degrees Celsius!

Read more about Interpac.

Note: Interpac heat recovery solution can also be installed on existing Wedholms milk cooling systems.