by Mike Stone | Greentech Media
July 13, 2015
India is the world’s No. 1 milk producer. Unfortunately, rural India is not well served by the electrical grid — creating problems for milk producers who need to keep their product cool.
In much of India, milk is brought by farmers to small, village-based collection centers. If the milk spoils before being collected from the center by the dairy, the farmer won’t get paid. What’s more, if a farmer misses that day’s pickup from the dairy, the product is unlikely to remain fresh without reliable refrigeration.
The milk industry needs reliable refrigeration, but that’s not easy with a highly unpredictable electrical grid.
The collection centers have a choice: risk spoiled product or invest in a diesel generator for when the grid fails. The second option is not only bad news for the environment — it also considerably inflates the operating cost of refrigeration.
Promethean Power Systems has come up with a solution to the problem. The company is manufacturing milk-chilling units connected to a patent-pending thermal battery that uses a phase-change material to store 28 kilowatt-hours of energy in the form of ice.