Within the milk processing industry, the overall aim of evaporation is to remove water from the milk product with minimum damage to the product while maintaining maximum efficiency and economy. To achieve this milk solids concentration, or 'concentrate density', must be monitored preciesly for control purposes.
Under real time fast moving process conditions, processors can either rely on operations staff to conduct time consuming and labour intensive manual sampling practices or utilise process instrumentation to provide a more accurate real time measurement.
After considerable process analysis and minor pipeline modifications, ACS has installed multiple K-Patents in line sanitary refractometers within a number of food and dairy processors to determine temperature compensated total solids accurately in real time and under adverse process conditions, allowing a greater accuracy and higher reliability than the currently used mass flow meters or manual sampling methods. A digitised refractive index signal immune to pipeline vibration, viscosity or colour variations is transmitted from the probe without signal drift for use in monitoring or control applications.
These refractometers have become a global standard for Fonterra and a national standard for many processors such as Murray Goulburn Co-Op.
