Modelling of pasteurization process line in

dairy industry in context of process control

Cite as: AIP Conference Proceedings 2029, 020074 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5066536
Published Online: 29 October 2018

Michał Śmieja, Patrycjusz Bogdański, and Kamil Czerwiński

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AIP Conference Proceedings 2029, 020074 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5066536 2029, 020074

© 2018 Author(s).
 Modelling of Pasteurization Process Line in Dairy Industry
in Context of Process Control
Michał Śmieja1, a), Patrycjusz Bogdański1, b) and Kamil Czerwiński2, c)
1
Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Warmia and Mazury, ul. Oczapowskiego 11, 10-710 Olsztyn, Poland
2
Institute of Control and Computation Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology, ul. Nowowiejska 15/19,
00-665 Warsaw, Poland
a)
Corresponding author: smieja@uwm.edu.pl
b)
patrycjusz.bogdanski@gmail.coml
c)
kczerwi2@mion.elka.pw.edu.pl

Abstract. This article presents preliminary effects of the identification of the heating exchange processes in industrial
milk processing applications in respect of making improvements in control and monitoring. Milk processing is
distinguished by its energy-intensity and the need to conform to standards in terms of possible dangerous contamination
of the final product. The most important stage in milk processing is its proper pasteurizing. The biggest challenge in front
of dairy producers and plant builders is to ensure that the process parameters are followed every time and as closely as
possible. Any deviation can lead to changed features or contamination, in overall to product recall and loss. The control
systems in place employ PID regulators tuned in the way of experiment and experience. The search of improved
algorithms must be preceeded by in-depth identification. The article presents research being undertaken in University of
Warmia-Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland. First chapter introduces the reader to milk processing area, followed by pasteurizing
process description, research done and achieved results.

INTRODUCTION
Milk production industry in Europe, due to highly competitive market and volatile milk prices, is subject to
actions which aim to improve effectiveness and flexibility of the concerned entities’ production plants. The
representatives of the industry, along with the policymakers articulate the need to merge and consolidate and to
undertake any efforts in order to improve resilience and innovation.
The milk processing provides many dairy and intermediate products among which there are: consumption milk,
milk powder, concentrated milk, skimmed milk, butter, cream, soured milk, whey and cheese. Limited time of
storing distinguishes milk from other products. In industrial applications, scheduled production volumes cannot be
inconsequentially delayed. Moreover fresh milk is highly susceptible to infection therefore it requires special
processing techniques to inactivate or completely eliminate bacteria which affect milk quality, expiry dates and
above all safety. In order to comply with food safety standards, it is essential to keep up to required process
parameters and its registration imposed by HACCP. In addition, any deviation in process parameters may lead to
changes in milk organoleptic features [2] and in consequence, to significant losses.

TECHNOLOGICAL PROCESS DESCRIPTION

The milk processing is multi stage operation. Depending on the final product the fresh milk is subject to different
operations. A typical stages of milk preparation for further processing are:
- swirling - a process of mechanical separation of cream and contaminants from the milk in the centrifuges,
- microfiltration - a process in which the milk is passed through a ceramic membrane with up to 5 μm pores in
order to separate contaminants from it,

Mechatronics Systems and Materials 2018

AIP Conf. Proc. 2029, 020074-1–020074-6; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5066536
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1751-9/$30.00

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 - pasteurization - a thermal process which destroys dangerous microorganisms that have made their way through
swirling and filtration stages,
- standardization - a process of mixing cream separated in centrifuges with milk in specific proportions.
The conducted research focused on the process of pasteurization, because of its energy-intensity and the need to
keep process parameters deviations minimum. According to the International Dairy Federation the pasteurization is
a thermal treatment process. Its goal is to minimize health danger to human posed by microorganism and enzymes
found in milk. [6]. In Table 1 are presented the conditions of selected thermal processes are presented. They vary in
time and energy requirements.

FIGURE 1. General plant schema

The fresh milk admitted to the processing plant is cooled and stored in tanks until production commencement.
During the production it is being pumped to a buffer tank. The buffer tank level is monitored and supplemented to
ensure constant flow in a pasteurizing unit. The pasteurizing unit consists of GEA Ecoflex multisection plate heat
exchanger (PHE), holding tank, compact, soldered PHE in steam-water loop and a set of pumps, automatic valves,
flow, temperature and pressure sensors. The holding tank is in fact a set of pipes in insulation for the milk to be kept
in high temperature for the time required in the recipe. The pasteurizing unit works as a constant flow process. On
leaving the pasteurizing unit the milk is transferred to inter-process holding tanks. The general schema of the is
illustrated in Fig. 1. The simplified scheme of the pasteurizing unit is presented in Fig. 2. The heat required to heat
the pasteurized milk is delivered from the steam through the steam-water PHE and consecutively through the water-
section V exchange. This two stage heating realization is justified by the more advanced capabilities of the
pasteurizing unit. The amount of heat supplied to the system is regulated by the V21 valve. From section V the hot
milk flows through the holding tank. Because of high thermal inertia of the whole pasteurizing unit the pasteurizing
process is conducted in four phases. In the first phase, the unit is being heated in short loop. In the second phase the
unit is being heated in the long loop. In both stages the product lines are filled with water as the heat distribution
agent. During the third phase the fresh milk flows into the buffer tank through V13 valve. It pushes the water to the
drop through V07 valve. Phase four is production. In this phase the milk flows through the buffer tank to the
pasteurizing unit, heats up in sections II and IV (from the already hot milk running through those sections from the
holding tank). In section V it is being heated up to the required temperature at the cost of the heat from water loop
and goes to the holding tank.
The control system applied in the pasteurization unit works as a closed loop system. Its goal is to stabilize the
holding tank outflow temperature (TRC04) as close to the process setpoint as possible. It is working on a PLC as a
software implemented PI algorithm. It controls the heat energy input to the system from the steam generating unit
through V21 valve. The PI parameters are chosen in the way of experiment and experience.

PROCESS IDENTIFICATION
Pasteurizing process identification efforts undertaken in this research are aiming to give grounds to the
improvement in control algorithms. The basics are the intermediate heat transfer. Literature presents a few ways to
model heat exchangers:
- dynamic lumped system model of the shell and tube heat exchanger [3] or the plate heater exchanger [1],
- steady-state lumped system model [7] to determine output temperature of the product. It requires known input
temperature of the product and known temperatures of the heating/cooling agent and the heater efficiency. It is
called an ε-NTU model,

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- -steady-state distributed system models giving exact mass and temperature distribution in the exchanger [8] or
more developed models [5] incorporating time-variant heat transfer coefficient,
- -dynamic distributed system model [4] which focuses on the milk fouling impact on the heat transfer efficiency.
The tested pasteurizing unit is different than the heat exchangers modeled by the authors in its complexity. The
amount of elements, working conditions and interference is significant. Most of the quoted sources make many
assumptions to simplify the phenomena at test. Some of those are: no heat losses occur from the plate heat
exchanger to the surrounding or the heat is exchanged only between liquids at work as if the heater channels had no
heat capacity. Those are in conflict with devices working in real conditions. It was therefore decided to produce
empirical (inductive reasoning) model rather than to build and verify theoretical (deductive reasoning) model.
TABLE 1. Main thermal processes in dairy industry (Tetra-Pak, 2013)l
Process Temperature Time
deg C

Low Temperature Long Time 63 30 min

(LTLT) milk pasteurization
High Temperature Short Time 72-75 15-20 sec
(HTST) milk pasteurization
Ultra-pasteurization 125-138 2-4 sec

PRELIMINARY RESULTS
Preliminary tests presented in the article are focused on the heating phase of installation. For the experiment
purposes additional temperature and pressure sensors were mounted in the pasteurization installation. In Fig. 2 the
added sensors are denoted as TT02, TT04, TT05, PT02. All current experiments are done in the open-loop
configuration. To perform identification the SCADA system with the PLC and the HMI interface was utilized.
From the control point of view the most important is the relation between valve V21 position and TRC04
temperature value. In the first stage of the process identification we focus only on this relation. The manipulated
variable - V21 was changed by the HMI interface, then the controlled variable - TRC04 was measured by the PLC.
All values with 2 sec time span were archived in the SCADA system. During the experiment the steam pressure
(PT02) and the temperature supply are constant. Different input signals were used e.g. step, multistep, sine-chirp.
The examples of the identification signal and the process response are presented in Fig. 3. Based on the first
results we know that the process can be described as inertia with delay. The delay value is related to the initial state
of the installation temperature and is estimated at about 20sec. Also we can see that the response of the model is
different in the changes of V21 value to up and down (two-directional multi step valve opening). The process is
heating faster than cooling. This is the way this phenomena is noticeable.
The data gathered during the experiment was used to validate different approaches to model the process, such as:
Auto Regressive with eXogenuous input (ARX), Nonlinear ARX, Neural Network with OE predictor, Nonlinear
Hammerstein-Wiener (H-W). The best results were achieved for H-W model. This model type is able to describe a
wide range of nonlinear processes thanks to natural consideration of nonlinearity in the input and output of the
process. In the Fig. 4 the structure of H-W model is presented. Signal u(t) is equivalent of manipulated signal value,
w(t) is the nonlinear function which transforms input data, x(t) is the linear transfer function and y(t) is the nonlinear
function which maps the output of the linear block to the system output.
The identified H-W model has 10 parameters for nonlinearity for input and output. The achieved fit equals
0.9561 Mean Squared Error (MSE) on the learning set of data and 88.31MSE on the verification data. The results of
simulation for both sets are presented in Fig. 5 and 6.

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FIGURE 2. Pasteurization flowsheet (Buffer tank, plate heat exchanger with section splitting, brazed exchanger for steam-water
system, called PHE, lockshield, temperature sensors: TRC01-TRC06, valves: V06, V07, V08, V13, V16, V23, V24, VR33, V21,
pumps: P01-P03, flowmeter FM01 and level sensor PT01) (on the base of Tetra Pack documentation)

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 FIGURE 3. Process identification input signals and process response

FIGURE 4. Hammerstein-Wiener Model structure

Measured and simulated model output - learning data

90
H-W Model
80
Data
70
TRC04 degC

60

50

40

30

20
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000
Time [s]

FIGURE 5. Hammerstein-Wiener model response to the learning data set

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 Measured and simulated model output - testing data
100

80

TRC04 degC
60
H-W Model
Data
40

20

0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
Time [s]
FIGURE 6. Hammerstein-Wiener model response to validation data set

SUMMARY
The achieved results of the research carried out on the real industrial object were used to formulate the SISO
model of the pasteurizing unit. The experiment under constant conditions is best reflected by Hammerstein-Wiener
model. Due to its preliminary character the identification process does not incorporate many features with potential
influence on the object dynamics. In industrial conditions many interference sources are observed such as
surrounding temperature changes or pressure drops in steam loop when other machines are at work. Those
interferences require further study and analysis in order to be taken into consideration in the final identification
assessment. In course of development new control algorithms are being researched at UWM, some including milk
fouling in the heat transfer area.

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