Dairy processor on a mission to reduce emissions

Global dairy company Arla Foods is on a mission to reduce carbon emissions in its operations by 63% by 2030.

It has appointed Grundfos to identify, report and achieve energy reductions across its 60 global dairy sites. So far, the pump manufacturer has assessed two-thirds of the sites and identified the opportunity to reduce total electricity consumption by 1.2%.

Grundfos also recently supplied and installed new intelligent pumps at the Arla Westbury dairy in the UK, which has helped the site achieve savings per year of 481,800 kWh energy and 194 tons CO₂ for its ice and chilled water systems.

The Westbury site manufactures a range of butter products with typical production figures of around 45,000 tonnes of skim milk powder and up to 80,000 tonnes of butter per year. The site has pumps installed for chilled and iced water applications, process water feed and steam boiler feed.

For chilled and ice water, the two banks of pumps in the refrigeration plant are used for critical processes at the factory such as post pasteurisation and product handling. The original pumps installed had effectively been working for 20 years since the factory was built, were direct online and weren’t mechanically sealed. This provided challenges for the personnel at the site in terms of both frequent service and ease of maintenance.

The Grundfos team advised on the selection of intelligent pumps and controls and delivered a turnkey end-to-end system for chilled and ice water, including installation, piping and commissioning, and validation of savings. For the chilled water system this meant replacing the three old 55 kW pumps with three new NB 80-200 37 kW pumps including frequency converters. In the ice water system, the three old 22 kW pumps were replaced by three new TPE 200-70 7.5 kW pumps with built-in frequency converters.

Because of the critical production timelines at the dairy, a considerable amount of preparation was required for the installation process. As they couldn’t be without one pump of the three, for reasons of reliability, Grundfos developed an installation plan with minimal impact onsite. The new NB and TPE pumps with frequency converters — external and built-in respectively — were up and running within the 12-hour window.

According to Andy Newman, Service Specialist, Arla Foods, the new pumps have a much better design.

“Even though they still use the modulating valve, we now have pressure control behind it. Now, the pumps sequence themselves and control to set points that we can alter. We also have more monitoring capability now and we can see the power consumption of the pumps locally,” Newman said.

“Another benefit is that the plant room is easier to maintain. The floor is generally completely dry. We don’t have water spillages and there’s a lot less manual handling. This improves the work environment as well.”

Arla Westbury also now requires fewer stock items onsite, reducing costs further. For example, just two different mechanical seals need to be stocked for the pumps, if required.

With the optimisation of the chilled and ice water loops, the next project for Grundfos at Arla Westbury was updating their boiler feed pumps. The steam boilers are a part of many processes in the dairy and are critical for running the evaporators, where steam is the main part of this process. The boiler feed project with new pumps resulted in annual savings of 4096 kWh pa and 33.81 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent.

Arla Foods has said that it’s committed to creating a more sustainable dairy production and now its other facilities will meet Grundfos for the energy assessment process.

“As a valued partner, we are very pleased to help Arla Foods in their energy optimisation efforts and to support them globally across their 60 dairy sites, thanks to our expertise, innovative products and solutions,” said Stéphane Simonetta, Group Executive Vice President & CEO – Industry, Grundfos.