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Promethean Installs Thermal Energy Based Bulk Milk Coolers at Thirumala’s Collection Sites in TN

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Promethean Power Systems recently installed its patented energy-efficient bulk milk coolers at village-level collection centers run by Thirumala Milk Products (P) Ltd, a subsidiary of Groupe Lactalis S.A.

Promethean’s innovative bulk milk coolers will now help Thirumala Milk Products (P) Ltd. chill raw milk efficiently without diesel generators at village level collection centres in Thirumannamallai district of Tamil Nadu and bring quality dairy products to consumers.

Why Promethean’s Bulk Milk Coolers?

Thirumala was seeking a village-level milk cooling solution that would help procure and preserve high-quality milk while being both cost- and energy-efficient. The company chose Promethean’s bulk milk coolers over other products available on the market due to overall energy efficiency, low operational costs, and diesel-free eco-friendly operations.

Promethean’s patented thermal-energy storage technology entirely eliminates the use of diesel generators for power backup, resulting in a significant drop in chilling expenses, and operational and maintenance costs for Tirumala Milk Products.

The installation of the milk chillers, each with a cooling capacity of 2,000 liters per day, was marked by a festive inauguration ceremony.

In addition to the bulk milk coolers, Thirumala installed Promethean’s solar pack add-on to maximize energy efficiency, reduce its carbon footprint even further, and eliminate the need for batteries to run the lights, milk analyzer and other essential equipment in the centers.  A significant advantage of using the solar pack is that the milk tanker will be able to collect the milk even when there is no electricity available at the site.

A Snapshot of Thirumala Milk Products (P) Ltd

Thirumala Milk Products is one of the largest manufacturers and suppliers of dairy products in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. Tirumala was founded in 1996 and was acquired by French dairy giant, Groupe Lactalis S.A., in 2014. The company is focused on producing high-quality milk products with an emphasis on freshness, taste, and healthiness at the best possible price. The company produces a range of assorted products including fresh milk, curd, flavored milk, lassi, buttermilk, ghee, UHT milk, ice-cream, and paneer. These are produced at nine state-of-the-art manufacturing plants spread across southern India. Tirumala has also built a strong presence in Telangana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

Have questions or comments? Please send them over to info@promethean-power.com.

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Bulk milk coolers: A cool way to chill for dairies and farmers

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Garima Rakesh Mishra | The Indian Express
February 23,

The near-quadrupling of milk procurement by dairy cooperatives in Gujarat over the last 15 years — from an average of 45 lakh litres to about 170 lakh litres per day — has been attributed no less to a single factor: 24-hour power in rural areas, including guaranteed three-phase supply for eight hours, enabling village-level societies to install bulk milk coolers (BMC). These, with capacities ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 litres, chill the milk to around 4 degrees celsius at the primary collection point itself, inhibiting microbial growth that can lead to undesirable quality/taste changes and expedite spoilage. 

But maintaining the freshness of raw milk sourced from farmers isn’t all that the BMCs have done.

In the pre-BMC era, the milk collected by the society had to reach the dairy plant by 8:30 am or so, before day temperatures rose. It required procurement to start by 6 am and farmers undertaking milking at least an hour earlier, so as to not miss the tanker. The sheer need to hurry through the process, moreover, limited the number of animals that could be milked. With BMCs, the milk was chilled at source and remained fresh, which gave farmers the flexibility to deliver even at 9 am. They could now afford to expand their herd size and supply more milk.

Today, an estimated 80 per cent of milk collected by Gujarat’s dairy unions comes through BMCs and it is not difficult to see the link between these and higher procurement volumes.

Not every state, unfortunately though, is Gujarat — where farmers have assured electricity supply allowing milk to be chilled not very long after it has left the udders of cows or buffaloes. In much of rural India, power supply is irregular, which means even BMCs cannot do without the backup of diesel generators.

This is where an innovation by Promethean Power Systems, a Pune-based company founded by two men from Boston has made a difference. In 2011, Sorin Grama and Sam White built the final prototype of a Rapid Milk Chiller (RMC) based on a proprietary Thermal Storage System (TSS) technology. At the heart of it lay a thermal battery, which drew and stored electricity from the grid as and when available. This stored energy it then released to rapidly chill the milk collected from farmers at ambient temperatures — say, 35 degrees — to 4 degrees Celsius.

Read the full article.

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A Better Way to Keep Milk Fresh

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Richard Martin | MIT Technology Review
July 21, 2015

 

Sometime this week a large milk refrigerator will arrive in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Since Bangladesh produces nearly four million tons of milk per year, that hardly seems remarkable; but this is a special kind of refrigerator.

Made by Promethean Power Systems, a company based in Pune, India, and Boston, the system keeps milk chilled with a thermal battery that stores energy and releases it, as cooling power, over the course of a day. Like India, Bangladesh has an outdated power grid that supplies electricity sporadically—often as little as a few hours per day. Rural dairy farmers on the subcontinent bring their milk to village collection centers that typically rely on diesel generators, a costly, dirty way of providing electricity.

Two Americans, Sam White and Sorin Grama, founded Promethean Power in 2007 to address a simple but widespread and pressing problem: how to keep milk cold without burning diesel fuel. They’ve been selling refrigerators in India for two years; this week marks their first export to neighboring Bangladesh.

“We’ve been at this for eight years,” says White, and “we’ve gone through all sorts of different technologies, attempts, and failures to figure out a solution.”

At first, he says, they were determined to craft a technology that relied on solar power—a noble attempt that ultimately failed because solar power, like grid power in India and Bangladesh, is by its nature intermittent, and refrigerators need constant power. Eventually they settled on a thermal energy storage system that uses a phase-change material to store energy in the form of ice. When the grid is operating, a portion of the material freezes, and the battery circulates that thermal energy into a heat exchanger to keep milk chilled over the course of the day. The thermal battery can store up to 28 kilowatt-hours of energy.

Read the full story here. 

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