Arla Foods achieves an extra week of production with ohmic heating

Arla Foods Holstebro Dairy produces cream cheese under the brand name Buko cream cheese. In the process, the factory relies on a bottling temperature of at least 68°. Previously, the dairy used steam-borne scraped surface heat exchangers for the process, where the cheese is heated up to 78°. This gives the dairy a safety margin of 10°, which is obviously a waste of energy. Furthermore, if the temperature drops below 68° in the bottling process, the cheese is too cold and has to be cooled down to 5° and then reheated to 78°, which is even more wasteful.

The solution was ohmic heating. By pumping the cream cheese through a pipe and sending current through the product, the ohmic system uses the resistance in the product for heating. This gives the dairy 96% efficiency and ensures that the cream cheese is exactly 68° with an accuracy of 0.3° at bottling. This means that the dairy avoids wasting 10° when bottling. At the same time, the dairy saves the many downtime they previously experienced when the temperature fell below 68°. Ultimately, this has meant that the dairy has gained the equivalent of an extra week's production per year.