The dairy industry is growing more and more every day, thanks to the use of milk as a beverage, as well as its transformation into a variety of commercial products. It is among the easily accessible and valuable nutrients with an average of 3.4% protein, 3.7% fat, 4.7% lactose and 0.7% minerals in its content. Dairy products, which enable the intake of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, protein, folic acid, zinc, iodine, and various vitamins with low calories, are an indispensable part of our eating habits.
On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that raw milk contains dangerous microorganisms such as Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria that threaten public health. In addition to bacteria living as saprophytes in raw milk, animal skin surface or mammary glands, Listeria monocytogenes, coliform bacteria may also be present. In addition, Clostridium spore bacteria cause white spots, bad taste and odor in cheese-derived end products, on the surface or on the crust. Harmful bacteria such as thermophilic Streptococci disrupt the pH balance and cause low calcium content in the product. All these dangers that raw milk can contain remind us once again how important the cleaning step is in the milk process.
The use of mechanical separation technologies in the milk processing process is causing the centrifugal separator industry to be positively affected by the changes. Today, the increasing demand for “capacity” obliges the machinery manufacturing industry to increase research in this field. In addition to cost reduction studies, another competitive issue in the sector is efforts to increase product quality. Bacterial separation separators (baktofugator), which are the customized versions of the cleaning separators, provide mechanical separation of bacteria and spores in milk before heat treatment. As the HAUS family, we started the bacteria separator work in 2017 within the scope of a government-supported project and offered our MAXCLEAN BACTERIA separator, which serves up to 15 tons/hour, to the demand of the industry. In the meantime, various R&D activities have been carried out in order to implement a new high-capacity baktofugator, and a new generation separator, where energy consumption & capacity is at the forefront, was completed at the end of 2021.
Minimizing operating costs thanks to its power consumption of approximately 0.85 kW/m3, our separator outperforms the standards by providing high capacity, cleaning performance and protection in milk quality at the same time.
Milk quality refers to less heat treatment and higher shelf life. Pasteurization and UHT processes, which are widely preferred in the industry, cause chemical changes in milk as they treat milk with heat, resulting in loss of flavor in milk. As the bactofugators allow the milk to be cleaned with the principle of mechanical separation instead of high heat, it does not leave any chemical effect on the milk and achieves a remarkable success in product quality by preserving the sensory properties of the milk. Especially milk containing high amount of bacteria is subjected to heat treatment over standard times. The use of bactofugator ensures that the heat treatment times are shortened in this type of milk, the sensory properties of the milk are preserved and the milk quality is increased. In the pasteurization process, which is important for cleaning milk, it is not possible to clean thermophilic bacteria (bacteria resistant to high temperatures). In such cases, the use of baktofugator closes the gaps in heat treatment technologies. It has been determined by academic studies that the use of bactofugator increases the quality of the end product even in facilities using UHT technology; In addition, it has been observed that the use of Bactofugator has much lower operating costs than technologies such as microfiltration & ultrafiltration that I compete in the same field.
Due to the structure of milk, there are various pollutants in its content. For this reason, the first step before processing is to filter the milk. Milk, which is purified from coarse residues and contaminants, is subjected to mechanical separation with the help of cleaning separators. Then, with the help of a pasteurizer, it is preheated to 55-60°C and fed into the baktofugator in order to get rid of the bacterial loads, and mechanical separation of the phases is performed. The most important factor enabling the separation process to take place is the density difference between the phases.
The densities of the phases in milk at 60°C are listed below.
• Aerobic sports: ~1,130 g/mL
• Anaerobic spores: ~1,132 g/mL
• Vegetative bacterial cells: 1.070 - 1.115 g/mL
• Skim milk: ~1.016 g/mL
• Whole milk: ~1.011 g/mL
• Milk fat: ~0.874 g/mL
As the density difference between the phases increases, the separation efficiency also increases. The milk, whose mechanical separation is completed, is sent to the pasteurization process. Bactofugator makes it possible to minimize the total bacterial load by cleaning somatic cell, aerobic and anaerobic spore-forming bacteria just before heat treatments.
During the implementation of the new generation high-capacity MAXCLEAN BACTERIA separator, many R&D activities were carried out, such as innovative drum group design, pump group designs that stand out with energy efficiency, and the implementation of **EHEDG’s “Hygienic Design” rules.
Energy recycling has been increased with improved centripetal pump designs. As a result of the improvements made on the circulation line, a stable separation efficiency has been achieved throughout the capacity range of the baktofugator. After the prototype production was completed, long-term trials and analyzes were carried out in order to determine the cleaning performance.
Separator performance has been recorded with long-term trials.
The performance of the separator; It has been confirmed by simultaneous analysis of cold chain transported samples in different laboratories. The effects of the R&D activities carried out on the performance can be seen in line with the sample analysis results. The performance data of the machine is shared in the chart below.
With MAXCLEAN BACTERIA, it is possible to get up to 95% performance in somatic cell cleaning. *
Bactofugator provides cleaning performance between 70% and 90%* in the total bacterial count, while it offers cleaning performance up to 90% in aerobic spore cleaning and up to 98% in anaerobic spore cleaning.*
You can contact us or visit our website for more information about the MAX series milk separators that provide superior separation efficiency.
* Performance values are given depending on the input product conditions given in the table. Variations in the input product may cause differences in performance.
