Two in a row for Aurecon: Lactose Evaporator project wins award

For the second year in a row, Aurecon has won the Food and Drink Award at the global IChemE Awards 2013. Aurecon won the award for its work on the Clandeboye Lactose Evaporator Project in New Zealand.

In 2012, the company’s work on the Dominion Salt Vacuum Plant Upgrade Project won it the Food and Drink Award.

The award recognises the best project or process that demonstrates innovation to optimise manufacturing operations and contributes to safe, nutritious and affordable food for the international market.

Looking to increase the yield of edible-grade lactose from its existing lactose plant at its Clandeboye dairy factory site, Fonterra engaged Aurecon to design, engineer and project manage the installation of a new lactose crystallising evaporator.

Aurecon faced the challenge of achieving the target process performance - increasing plant product yield from 64% to 76% - without the use of any additional raw material.

Evaporation plants used in the lactose manufacturing process typically operate at high solids concentrations. These process conditions often result in significant fouling of evaporator heat transfer surfaces, which necessitates regular cleaning and results in lost production time and the formation of small crystals in the downstream batch cooling crystallisation process.

Aurecon’s innovative design, which also incorporated features to improve lactose crystal growth, dramatically reduced heat transfer surface fouling. The novel design provides extended product run times, improved product yield, reduced water and chemical requirements for cleaning, lower product losses and less wastewater generation than existing evaporator options.

The project increased the plant’s lactose manufacturing capacity by more than 25% without using any additional raw material and enabled the recovery of lactose for incorporation in higher value export dairy products that previously Fonterra would have sold as a low-value animal feed or spray irrigated on land.

“I am honoured to have been part of the team to receive an IChemE award for chemical engineering innovation and excellence,” said Paul Stephenson, Aurecon’s Project Leader on the Clandeboye Lactose Evaporator project. “This is a great achievement for all who worked on the project.”