Comparative study on phase changing material for refrigeration effect for milk chilling

Abstract

In developed countries the milking collection is done to process in various diary plants situated far away from production areas.  There is a problem of cool chain management, which, generally is absent at farm levels.  To manage the cool chain in milk transportation system right from farm level it is required that some locally available techniques/materials should be selected and used for milk chilling.  The objective of current study is to ascertain mechanism for chilling of milk at farm immediately after milking.  The experiments were conducted and the cooling performance was evaluated by noting down the drop in temperature with respect to time using mercury thermometer.  The respective regression equation and R2 value were obtained for every run of the experiment.  It was observed that the relation between temperature drop and time was significant for coolant to product ratio of 1:3 & 1:2 under insulated condition (p<0.05).  The study showed that the cooling of milk can effectively be done by immersing the ice packs in milk by using ice to product ratio in range from 1:3 to 1:2 under insulated condition within the recommended time as per standards.

Keywords: PCM, ice, milk, insulation, temperature drop, time