Not only do dairies need to become more agile to accommodate just-in-time deliveries to retailers, they also need the flexibility to add new products and expand their product portfolios as consumer demands change.
To remain competitive, dairies require reliable production solutions that enable them to achieve superior and consistent product quality with minimal product losses. These solutions also need to help them reduce operating costs, particularly in today’s increasingly challenging economic environment. In short, they need customised solutions specifically designed to meet their individual production and performance requirements.
Tetra Pak has introduced Tetra Lactenso Aseptic (TLA), a new generation of customised aseptic processing solutions that enable dairy producers to achieve superior and consistent product quality, while reducing operating costs by up to 20% and minimising environmental impact.
Tetra Lactenso Aseptic represents a new approach to working with dairy customers. In custom-designing an end-to-end production solution for each customer, Tetra Pak considers not only the individual pieces of equipment, but the entire production process, and it tailors the solution to meet each customer’s specific performance targets, such as litre per hour of output or product quality benchmarks. The company guarantees that the solution will meet the customer’s desired targets, and it’s validates just to be sure.
The basic building blocks incorporated in the Tetra Lactenso Aseptic solutions are the result of close, long-term relationships with dairy customers all over the world, together with eight years of research and development focused on new solutions and on enhancing current offerings to increase operational efficiency, provide higher product quality and sustainability, and enhance food safety.
Major breakthroughs have included:
UHT treatment sterilises white milk by heating it to 140°C before packaging, using either an indirect (plate or tubular heating exchanger-based) or a direct (infusion or injection) heating process.
As part of its ongoing research and development, Tetra Pak has been able to prolong the running times for indirect UHT treatment to up to 40 hours using Tetra Therm Aseptic Flex tubular heat exchangers. This results in 16-28 additional hours of running time for this indirect UHT technology, where the industry normal running times average 12-24 hours. This means the Tetra Therm Aseptic Flex UHT system is available 95% of the time, offering a new level of efficiency to customers.
The company has achieved this with a cocktail of new technical solutions that reduce fouling in the tubular processing modules. Fouling – the accumulation of deposits – diminishes the effectiveness of heat exchangers by increasing the temperature at which they operate, which also increases energy, maintenance and operational costs.
Food producers in general – and dairy producers specifically – depend on sound preproduction methods to deliver safe and healthy products. As part of its development efforts for TLA, Tetra Pak has developed ColdSpot technology, an engineering tool that calculates the correct temperature load and pre-sterilisation time of food processing equipment; particularly the exact time it takes to sterilise the most difficult point in the system, which is called ‘the cold spot’. This helps ensure food safety, while at the same time avoiding unnecessary heating.
With growing environmental awareness and ever-rising energy costs, dairy producers are looking for ways to reduce their energy consumption. In developing Tetra Lactenso Aseptic, Tetra Pak conducted significant research and development focused on heat exchangers, which are central to dairy operations for UHT treatment, and other processes that affect product quality and safety.
To keep operational costs low, it’s critical that heat exchangers operate with maximum uptime and long running times, while conserving energy as much as possible. That’s why the company has developed a heat recovery process for Tetra Therm Aseptic Flex, a processing unit for UHT treatment using tubular heat exchangers.
Tetra Therm Aseptic Flex employs produc-to-product heat recovery, a process in which the energy from the heated product is captured as the milk is cooled prior to filling. Using this method, we’re able to recover and reuse up to 92% of the energy used.
In addition, the processing system’s Aseptic Hibernation Function automatically reduces product flow when the unit circulates water, without losing aseptic status. This in turn reduces steam, water and electricity consumption during this hibernation period by 75%.
Tetra Pak has tested the building blocks of Tetra Lactenso Aseptic in the field, working with selected dairy partners all over the world to validate performance criteria.
Bengt Eliasson is Dairy & Beverage systems manager of Aseptic Dairy Solutions for Tetra Pak – a food and drink processing and packaging company.
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