Arla Foods achieves a week of extra production with ohmic heating

At Arla Foods Holstebro Dairy, cream cheese is produced under the brand name Buko cream cheese. In the process, the factory is dependent on a tapping temperature of at least 68°. In the past, the dairy has used steam-borne scraper heat exchangers for the process, in which the cheese is heated up to 78°. Thus, the dairy has a safety margin of 10°, which is of course a waste of energy. Furthermore, if the temperature falls below 68° in the tapping process, the cheese is too cold and must be cooled down to 5° and then heated to 78° again, resulting in even greater waste.

The solution was ohmic heating. By pumping the cream cheese through tubing and sending current through the product, the ohmic system uses the resistance in the product for heating. In this way, the dairy achieves 96% efficiency and ensures that the cream cheese with a precision of 0.3° is exactly 68° when when tapping. This way the dairy avoids wasting 10° when tapping. At the same time, the dairy avoids the many downtimes, which they have previously been affected by when the temperature fell below 68°. This has ultimately meant that the dairy has achieved the equivalent of one week of extra production per year.