Thermodynamic analysis of a milk pasteurization process assisted by geothermal energy

Nurdan Yildirim and Seda Genc

Energy, 2015, vol. 90, issue P1, 987-996

Abstract: Renewable energy system is an important concern for sustainable development of the World. Thermodynamic analysis, especially exergy analysis is an intense tool to assess sustainability of the systems. Food processing industry is one of the energy intensive sectors where dairy industry consumes substantial amount of energy among other food industry segments. Therefore, in this study, thermodynamic analysis of a milk pasteurization process assisted by geothermal energy was studied. In the system, a water–ammonia VAC (vapor absorption cycle), a cooling section, a pasteurizer and a regenerator were used for milk pasteurization. Exergetic efficiencies of each component and the whole system were separately calculated. A parametric study was undertaken. In this regard, firstly the effect of the geothermal resource temperature on (i) the total exergy destruction of the absorption cycle and the whole system, (ii) the efficiency of the VAC, the whole system and COP (coefficient of performance) of the VAC, (iii) the flow rate of the pasteurized milk were investigated. Then, the effect of the geothermal resource flow rate on the pasteurization load was analyzed. The exergetic efficiency of the whole system was calculated as 56.81% with total exergy destruction rate of 13.66 kW. The exergetic results were also illustrated through the Grassmann diagram.

Keywords: Milk pasteurization; Geothermal energy; Thermodynamic analysis; Exergy analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544215010476
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:90:y:2015:i:p1:p:987-996

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2015.08.003

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().