SalzburgMilch collects climate award
At the Austrian Energy Efficiency in Industry and Commerce conference, SalzburgMilch dairy was awarded the climate active prize for its commitment to energy efficiency.
It was honoured for the project at its Lamprechtshausen cheese dairy that contributes to the better use of waste heat in various areas. The measures implemented save considerable amounts of energy and carbon emissions each year.
SalzburgMilch has been a climate active project partner of the Austrian Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism for a number of years and is committed to continuously reducing energy consumption, it said.
“Responsible use of resources has been of particular importance to SalzburgMilch for many years,” said Andreas Gasteiger, managing director of SalzburgMilch. “Many measures in a wide range of areas, such as the use of electric cars in the vehicle pool or various projects at our two company locations, also contribute to this. This has reduced our energy consumption by 14% in the past three years.”
At its site in Lamprechtshausen, two separately managed tanks, one as a heat store and one as a cold store (each with a capacity of 120m³), are used as a so-called heat swing. The whey produced during cheese production is cooled by a heat exchanger and the heat generated is stored in the warm tank of the heat swing.
In order to reach the necessary temperatures, the whey has to be cooled by means of a refrigeration system and the washing water has to be reheated by steam through natural gas boilers.
In the course of the project, the existing storage facilities are connected in series, so the usable storage volume is merged into a common, layered storage volume of 240m³. With this measure, the differences between waste heat generation and waste heat consumption can be compensated much better.
An additional heat exchanger for whey cooling enables the washing water to be directly heated with the 50°C warm whey from the hard cheese production, which means that primary energy is no longer required for heating. To the extent of the additional waste heat used, cooling energy for the whey is also saved.
These measures ensure significant reductions in natural gas (791,596 kWh/year), electricity (154,730 kWh/year) and CO2 (233,307 kg/year).
