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Everybody knows milk gives energy, but few realise that it also drinks energy.
Keeping milk chilled at the lakhs of collection centres is an energy-intensive activity, as it needs to be kept at 4°C till trucks take it to dairies. Add to it, the need to clean tanks with hot water — quite a lot of energy is consumed at collection centres.
“The Government of India wants to disrupt energy footprint in milk collection,” says Purushothaman Ravichandran, President, Danfoss India, which makes products that go into heating, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment, such as drives, valves and controls.
Danfoss has developed a solar-powered milk chiller that can reduce power consumption at milk collection centres by as much as 18 per cent, Ravichandran, who is also the Chairman of the CII Task Force on Cold Chain Development, told BusinessLine.
The machine can run both on electricity from the grid and on solar, and also produce hot water for cleaning the tanks.
The price would depend on the size of the tank, said Ravichandran, but range between ₹1 lakh and ₹10 lakh “at today’s costing”. He said with scale Danfoss will be able to bring down the cost of the machines.
Asked if an entrepreneur could buy this machine and provide chilling as a service, Ravichandran said that there are many business models and Esco — energy service company — is one. However, Danfoss at the moment is not engaged in developing Esco entrepreneurs; it is busy launching the product, which is expected to happen in September.
The machine will be paid-back in terms of energy savings in seven years, Ravichandran said.
Lake rejuvenation
On Thursday, Danfoss ‘handed over’ a pond it rehabilitated to the Collector of Kanchipuram district, where the company’s plant is located.
Several companies in Tamil Nadu are engaged in water body rejuvenation in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry. It is part of a special drive initiated by the State government in the aftermath of the 2015 floods and the Vardah cyclone.
Ravichandran said that there are about 65 defunct water bodies in the neighbourhood of the Danfoss plant and the company intends to bring them back to life.
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