Dairy Trigeneration: Saving money on dairy farms through highly efficient milk cooling.

Biogas Trigen, the ultimate dairy farm milk chiller

Using trigen to reduce farm energy costs

If you are finding electricity costs are becoming more and more of a financial burden for your dairy farm, finding a long term solution that suits your needs is likely on the top of your list – and trigeneration fits those requirements. 

Trigeneration systems offer an environmentally-friendly, sustainable way to decrease your energy costs and increase the reliability of power production on your site, through the use of biogas and created on your farm inconjuction with biogas, LPG or Diesel fuel. Give our knowledgeable team of specialists a call today to learn more!

How does trigeneration work with dairy farms?

Trigeneration, otherwise known as CCHP, trigen or combined cooling, heat and power, is the creation of cooling, heat and power from a single generator. When it comes to its application on dairy farms, a CCHP system creates:

1. Electricity to power your farm,

2. Useful hot water at 85 – 90 C for washing and sanitation, and

3. Chilled water to cool your milk. Our milk cooling system will drop milk into your tank at 4 C.

How does dairy trigeneration differ from dairy cogeneration?

The difference between cogeneration and trigeneration when it comes to dairy farms is cooling – a trigen contributes to the cooling of milk and other products, as well as heating and electricity generation, whereas cogneneration contributes to heating and electricity generation only.

Why choose a trigen system for your dairy farm?

There are a range of benefits when it comes to CCHP systems for dairy farms, such as:

• Less power to provide enhanced cooling.
• High energy efficiency levels.
• Biogas produced onsite from cow manure and or biomass can be used as fuel with LPG or diesel used as a back up.
• Lower electricity and energy bills.
• More reliable energy production.

What benefits do an Inoplex CCHP Trigeneration system offer to your dairy farm?

The Inoplex CCHP Trigeneration system is known as the ‘Dairy in a Box’, offering dairy farmers a highly efficient alternative. The Dairy in a Box includes a highly efficient refrigeration upgrade to enable farms to meet more stringent milk chilling requirements, with its use in a variety of applications showing an impressive 40% energy saving. In essence, the strategy it implements is simply to use less power do provide enhanced cooling.

Our Trigeneration package for diary farms includes a hybrid, environmental combination of absorption chiller to achieve 5 – 7 C, and an Australian designed and manufactured high efficiency refrigeration system to finish the cooling to 3.5 – 4.5 C via a chilled water loop. This packaged combination of absortion chiller and refrigeration will reduce the power used to cool milk by up to 60%. If you need to reduce your milk refrigeration power costs, then phone or email us and for a tailored environmental upgrade that will reduce your operating costs, and reduce your environmental impact.

We understand that dairy farms still require water heating and power to function, so a biogas and LPG , diesel dual fuel combined heat and power generator is included in the Dairy in a Box. The dairy effluent stabilisation lagoon is converted to a covered anaerobic lagoon digester to produce the required biogas to fuel the system and, where the existing lagoon cannot be converted, either a new lagoon or tank based digester can be implemented.

Trigeneration solutions for dairy farms of all sizes

At Inoplex, we understand that a significant portion of the energy used in most dairy farm refrigeration systems is used to drive fans, which vent heat to the air. This results in 100s of KW of thermal energy wasted to the atmosphere per day, just cooling milk to the appropriate temperatures. 

Instead of wasting this milk heat, the Dairy in Box system diverts it into the anaerobic lagoon or tank that is producing the biogas, which enhances biogas production for use as fuel. In essence, the milk refrigeration system is acting as a heat pump, moving heat from the milk into the effluent pond. Working at the warmer temperatures, the lagoon digesters produce extra gas and better clean up the effluent water, offering further benefits for the farm.

The combined heat and power generator also provides hot water for sanitation of the dairy operations, so the energy needed to run the electrically powered hot water systems will be eliminated. Additionally, the generator can also run on LPG, diesel, as well as biogas from cow manure and or wood chips, at a highly efficient rate, costing less than purchasing power from the grid. This also provides a cost-effective back up for the reliable operation of your dairy farm.

Speak to one of our dairy trigeneration experts today

If you would like to know more about trigeneration and how it can assist your dairy farm, give Inoplex a call today on 0448 307 282 and we can discuss the use of trigen for your business.