Stand-alone On-Wheel Solar Milk Pasteurization

Many conventional pasteurization equipment utilizes the thermal energy of steam. The combustible process of fuel creates this heat energy. Milk undergoes pasteurization by heating it to 63 °C while maintaining it there for a period of thirty minutes. In general, the pasteurization process is done on a large scale at a centralized location. There are only a few distributed milk pasteurization systems. The present article focuses on a study of onboard solar pasteurization system development. The solar energy may be employed to pasteurize milk. The pasteurization is carried out during milk transportation to the centralized location. One of the key parts of this system is the solar air heater. The effective rate of solar air heaters is influenced by several factors. These parameters, such as air mass flow rate, solar radiation, wind velocity, and atmospheric temperature, are adjusted in this work to examine air variation in outlet temperature. For the air flow rate from 0.01 to 0.1 kg/s, air outlet temperature varies from 89.20 to 61.23 °C for 40 °C, and for air flow rates from 0.1 to 0.19 kg/s, there is negligible impact on air outlet temperature. Further at the lowest air flow rate of 0.01 kg/s, the variation in the outlet air temperature is 86.67–109.78 °C, and for the variation in the solar radiation, it is 700–1150 W/m2. At 1110 W/m2 and 4 m/s, the air outlet temperature is 110.05 °C which is sufficient for the milk pasteurization process.