Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The present climate discussion has made energy efficiency an interesting topic. Saving energy does
not only help the climate but also saves money for the energy consumer.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the potential of heat recovering from milk cooling. Two
milk farms, one with voluntary milking system, VMS, and the other with conventional milking system
was used to measure interesting temperatures and electricity consumptions. The numbers were used
both to do theoretical calculations and to construct a SIMULINK model.

To calculate the potential for heat at milk farms theoretical calculations were made in MATLAB using
a reference farm with different combinations of heat recovery and pre cooling. The farm was
assumed to keep a dwelling house with the annual heat consumption 18165 kWh. The calculations
showed that with 100 cattle 90 % of the heat needed was covered and 150 cattle are sufficient to
cover the entire need of heat. It also showed that pre cooling almost saved 50 % of the electricity
used by the compressor.

The SIMULINK model was constructed according to the VMS farm and showed that 200 cattle were
necessary to heat the house the entire year and 150 cattle covered 88 % of the energy needed.