Characteristic of a Dairy Production Line under Uncertainty
Special Symposium - Innovations in Food Technology (LMC Congress)
Flexible Production, PAT & Modelling (Food-3a)
Keywords: flexibility, operability, dairy, simulation
Dynamic and demanding food market often makes food companies to manufacture a range of different products in reduced time limits according to orders rather than to sales prediction. The product-orientated food production line needs to be very flexible to handle all similar or different products through simply changing operation parameters. Because of the time or production amount limit, additional rounds of process refinement are often not carried out. It is very important to quantitatively understand the characteristics and flexibility of a food process in processing the uncertain food products.
In this work, we have investigated the operability and flexibility of a dairy production line in processing different products using the flexibility analysis method developed by Grossmann and his coworkers (Ref. 1) through a process simulation tool, PRO/II. Physical property models of diary products are developed and built into PRO/II system. For the product-orientated process in dealing with processing very diverse milk products, the process operability should first be considered. We have first applied milk product viscosity and system pressure drop as characteristic parameters to determine a process operation window. Then, the flexibility of the operation window vertex is evaluated with the minimization of the process pasteurization and cooling temperatures through vertex enumeration method. Based on the quantitative description for the process operability and flexibility, a food company can develop a new strategy to apply modern lean manufacturing concept in its production management.
This work has demonstrated that the well-developed flexibility analysis method in chemical engineering area can be extended into food process design and development combining with process simulation tools. However, the development of food material physical property calculation models is very crucial in the applications. The established process operability and flexibility analysis framework can be adapted to other liquid food productions.
Ref. 1: Swaney, R., Grossmann, I.E., 1985. An index for operational flexibility in chemical process design. Part-I: formulation and theory. AIChE J. 31 (4), 621-630.
Presented Wednesday 19, 16:50 to 17:05, in session Flexible Production, PAT & Modelling (Food-3a).
