IDM | Technology/IT Milk standardization for cheese GEA The technology used for standardizing milk for cheese production is in common use throughout the industry: generally centrifugal separation for fats and membrane filtration for proteins and other components of the raw milk. However, it is the intelligent use of control systems that have the ability to optimize processes. Here, Jörn Künsebeck (joern. kuensebeck@gea.com) who leads the application development department in the field of liquid dairy at GEA, looks at the benefits. A primary purpose of standardizing milk for cheese manufacture is to obtain the maximum economic return from the milk. This is achieved by balancing the composition of the milk feed into the cheese making process to match given recipes, while minimizing raw material costs and maintaining the desired cheese quality. This process, however, is complicated by the natural variation in milk quality: for example from different herds and at different times of the year. The seasonal variation in protein levels – lower in summer and higher in winter – can have a significant influence on the process yield. Also prolonged or even short storage and fluctuations in temperature can affect the proportion of casein and whey proteins in cheese curd. By standardizing the proportions of protein and fat in the milk feed, cheese producers can reliably produce cheeses with more consistent quality, improve the reliability of the process, increase flexibility so that different recipes can be produced on the same equipment, and achieve maximum efficiency from their plants. What’s more, it is possible to add standardization technology to an existing plant to achieve these benefits with the minimum of capital outlay. Combination of membrane filtration processes GEA achieves this through a combination of careful control of the membrane filtration process 18 · 10 2016 | international-dairy.com Filtration plant at Tara in Israel installed by GEA (photo: GEA) up stream, intelligent milk storage with different milk fractions stored in separate tanks, and high-level automation control to ensure that the feed components are recombined to create a standardized flow of milk into the process. Working with a standard raw material in this way, with known physical characteristics, means that cheese making equipment can operate at optimum efficiency without the risk that valuable components of milk could be wasted. The process also generates side streams of product such as casein or whey that can be used for dosing operations or to produce high quality, value-added by-products. This gives the milk used for cheese manufacturing a second life in two ways: casein for cheese; and the native whey protein extracted prior to the cheese mak- ing process which has many applications such as in infant formula or specialist dietary products. Using GEA technology in this way removes the need for manufacturers to buy dosing products, such as powdered protein, on the spot market which is expensive. The precise origin of bought-in products can also sometimes be hard to establish leading to ‘track and trace’ difficulties. The use of GEA standardization technology helps to prevent such problems. The system can be applied to both batch and continuous processes and allows users to operate cheese making plants more profitably, more accurately, more transparently with the precise track and trace processes demanded by today’s legislation and auditing requirements, and with better use of raw materials.
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