Exergetic performance assessment of whole milk powder production

Many factors such as unconscious usage of natural resources, environmental pollution, increasing production and consumption cause the depletion of energy resources. As in many industries, energy in the food production sector is largely due to fossil fuels and depletion of fossil fuels is very important for energy planning. In this study, the production of whole milk powder, which is a drying process where intense energy is spent, has been investigated in the food production sector. Usage of cumulative energy and exergy in all milk powder production were calculated exergetics by carbon dioxide emission values. In this study, the whole process of producing milk powder from farm to fork is evaluated. In the production of milk powder, it has been calculated total of 36789.27 MJ cumulative energy, 86080,76 MJ cumulative exergy and 2306,2 kg carbon dioxide emission is generated to produce 1 ton of whole milk powder. Raw milk production constitutes 70.6% of cumulative energy utilization, 85.3% of cumulative exergy utilization, and 72.1% of cumulative carbon dioxide emission utilization, and the process where the most energy is spent in total. In addition, most of the energy that enters raw milk production comes from renewable sources, namely plants that feed on animals. The exergy lost in raw milk production turns into useful products such as milk and fertilizer, making the process renewable. The machines that use the most energy during the milk powder production are respectively spray dryers, evaporators and pasteurizers. Spray dryer is the process with the highest energy use, the highest exergy destruction and the highest carbon dioxide emission usage with a rate of 51%. With this study, cumulative energy-exergy analysis techniques are more meaningful when it is difficult to obtain experimental results in food processing processes such as drying process, where intense energy use takes place and more general photography is important. It is more possible to provide sustainable energy use with cumulative energy-exergy analysis for factories processing milk and dairy products, which have an important place especially in daily nutrition.