Dairy Production and Renewable Energy

Carbon Reduction at BV Dairy
Milk from the Blackmore Vale is processed by BV Dairy into fresh and cultured creams, soft cheese and yoghurt, for sale to food manufacturers and food service customers.

BV Dairy is decreasing its carbon footprint (volume of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted in manufacturing and distribution operations). Emissions can be reduced by cutting fossil fuel consumption or generating renewable energy. We are doing both - generating heat and electricity.

Clearfleau, our project partner, is a British company that designed the system for extracting energy from liquid food processing residues. This plant was built with finance from the Environmental Transformation Fund (ETF), administered by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), as part of a Government initiative to stimulate innovative Anaerobic Digestion (AD).

Biogas From Processing Waste
Manufacturing products like soft cheese and yoghurt produces some waste materials, plus wash-waters from cleaning equipment. Previously this was treated at the local sewage works and each week an additional 11 trucks of material were supplied to local pig farmers as animal feed (a declining market).

Bio-degradable materials, containing organic matter, sugars, fats and proteins, can be treated using AD. In thisnatural degradation process, bacteria break down bio-degradable compounds in the absence of oxygen to produce biogas (mainly methane and carbon dioxide).

Digestion of this processing waste has required innovative process design. Clearfleau's system converts previously discarded materials into energy on a restricted footprint.The process was successfully trialled here in 2009 - with a small scale plant, before building the main plant.

Project Objectives
This plant will treat the waste materials on site - thus reducing sewer disposal costs, while generating renewable energy for use in the dairy. Other key objectives for the project were to:

• Minimise residual waste sent for treatment elsewhere
• Produce biogas without adding other waste materials
• Generate energy - both power and heat for use on site
• Install it on a restricted footprint to limit local impact

WRAP's aims in supporting the project are:

• Cost effective production of biogas on industrial sites
• Wider environmental benefits of anaerobic digestion
• Reduction in the carbon footprint of food processing
• More efficient treatment of industrial bio-effluents.