Biogas Milk Chiller Solution by Simgas

The Problem

In most developing and newly industrialised countries, raw milk is not cooled at farm level. As a result, quality of (evening) milk is lost because it doesn’t survive the heat overnight. And low quality (evening) milk is rejected by collection centres.

In East Africa, the emerging dairy industry affects the livelihoods of more than 2 million smallholder farmers. While demand is expected to more than double in coming years, only 15 percent of milk produced reaches the formal market and 30–50 percent is not delivered to milk collection centres. The reason being that raw milk is not cooled at farm level because 85 percent of rural East Africa lacks access to a (reliable) power grid.

The Solution

SIMGAS Tanzania developed a biogas-powered milk chiller to increase income of small-scale dairy farmers and to eliminate milk spoilage and this has been installed throughout Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia.

The Biogas Milk Chiller provides off-grid biogas-powered milk cooling on-farm, allowing smallholder dairy farmers without access to electricity to store, deliver and sell the highest possible quality of raw milk and increase their income using biogas generated from the manure of their cows as a source of energy. This milk chiller is designed for small holder dairy farmer with 2-10 cows, living in East Africa.

This bottom-up approach is new to the dairy industry; instead of focusing on the top of the cold chain – the processors – Simgas focus on filling the gap at the bottom, where the problem originates: at the dairy farmers.

Milk Chiller shall be a widely accepted link in the cold chain for emerging dairy sectors worldwide.

Benefits

• Off-grid; biogas-powered
• Cooling capacity between 2.5 and 10 Liters; sufficient for more than 80% of all dairy farmers in East Africa
• Complies with international milk cooling standard: from 35ºC to 4ºC within 3 hours
• Runs on any type of domestic anaerobic digester
• Cools 7x faster than a household refrigerator
• Affordable with milk payback scheme

·         Biogas milk chilling saves time: instead of delivering milk twice a day, small dairy farmers can deliver once a day.

·         Increased loyalty of members for milk delivery, increased intake of evening milk, reduced milk rejection, reduced electricity use for cooling milk, increased utilisation of installed processing capacity and improved quality of collected milk.

How it works

Farmers feed the biogas system (bio-digester) with cow manure on a daily basis. Clean energy, biogas, is produced and transported through a gas pipe from the bio-digester to power the milk chiller.

Using the proven and reliable absorption cooling technology, heat from biogas combustion is used to generate cold. This cold is stored in an innovative compact storage system during the day and charges the system for a milk cooling cycle.

The end user divides the evening milk produce over two five litre milk cans, places them into the holders and starts the cooling cycle. The milk is cooled from 35°C to 4°C within three hours and subsequently kept at 4°C overnight, thus complying with international cooling standards. The next morning the preserved evening milk is delivered to the milk collection centre together with the morning milk.

 

Impact

The SimGas Biogas Milk Chiller (BMC) will empower small dairy farmers to guide their own development; the BMC can greatly improve the income of small dairy farmers, help supply to meet demand, help farmers to access the formal dairy market, and contribute to improved nutrition.

The quantity and quality of milk will improve, which will enable dairies to better meet the increasing demand for milk and milk products. Savings at the farm level will lead to additional investments and more satisfied members. In addition, the use of clean energy (biogas) for cooling and other purposes, such as cooking, will help reduce deforestation and carbon emissions

Compiled by GRAIN-Nigeria from Simgas