 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
A milking pipeline or milk pipeline is a component of a dairy farm animal-milking operation which is used to transfer milk from the animals to a cooling and storage bulk tank.
In small dairy farms with less than 100 cows, goats or sheep, the pipeline is installed above the animals' stalls and they are then are milked in sequence by moving down the row of stalls. The milking machine is a lightweight transportable hose assembly which is plugged into sealed access ports along the pipeline.
In the United States, for farmers who participate in the voluntary Dairy Herd Improvement Association, approximately once a month the milk volume from each animal is measured using additional portable metering devices inserted between the milker and the pipeline.
In large dairy farms with more than 100 animals, the pipeline is installed within a milking parlor that the animals walk through in order to be milked at fixed stations. Because the machine is stationary, it can include additional fixed equipment such as computerized milk-metering systems to measure volume, which would be cumbersome to use with portable milkers.
In both cases the pipeline is constructed out of stainless steel, which does not easily corrode and is resistant to most chemicals, though larger operations may use larger-diameter pipes in order to handle greater milk volumes.
There is usually a transition point to move the milk from the pipeline under vacuum to the bulk tank, which is at normal atmospheric pressure. This is done by having the milk flow into a receiver bowl or globe, which is a large hollow glass container with electronic liquid-detecting probes in the center. As the milk rises to a certain height in the bowl, a transfer pump is used to push it through a one-way check valve and into a pipe that transfers it to the bulk tank. When the level has dropped far enough in the bowl, the transfer pump turns off. Without the check valve, the milk in the bulk tank could be sucked back into the receiver bowl when the pump is not running.
In the event of electronics or pump failure, there is also usually a secondary bowl attached to the top of receiver bowl, which contains a float and a diaphragm valve. If the main receiver bowl overflows due to pump failure, the rising milk lifts the float in the secondary bowl, which will cut off vacuum to the entire milk pipeline and will prevent the milk or wash water from being sucked into the vacuum pump.
Some milk handling systems eliminate the receiver bowl and transfer pump by having rubber seals on the bulk tank covers, to permit the entire tank to be under vacuum until milking is finished. Milk can then just flow directly by gravity from the pipeline into the bulk tank.
The pipeline and all milk handling systems are cleaned after every milking session using a washing system that first rinses out the remaining milk and then flushes cleaning solution through the piping to kill bacteria and remove milkstone, a layer of scale mainly formed by cations like calcium and magnesium. The entire washing mechanism is operated very much like a household dishwasher with an automatic fill system, soap dispenser, and automatic drain opener.
The pipeline is usually set up so that the vacuum in the system that lifts milk up can also be used to drive the cleaning process. Rather than having a single line run to the bulk tank, typically a pair of lines transport milk by gravity flow to the receiver bowl and transfer pump. The high ends of these two lines are joined together to form a complete loop back to the receiver bowl.
Cleaning is accomplished by inserting a choke plug into one of the lines leading to the transfer pump, and sucking large volumes of water from a wash-water supply tank into the choked line. This choke plug is mounted on a rod, and is inserted into the line before cleaning, and pulled out for regular milking. Due to the choke, the water, which is sufficient to completely fill the pipe, is sucked up one side of the pipeline, over the high point joining the two pipeline sections, and then flows back to the receiver bowl and transfer pump through the unchoked line. The transfer pump is then used to move the cleaning solution from the receiver bowl back to the wash-water supply tank to restart the process.
Typically, the inlet ports on the receiver globe are designed so that large slugs of wash water moving at high speed will enter on a tangent to the sides of the globe and rapidly spin around inside to assist in vigorous cleaning of the globe's interior. It is normal for wash water to overflow out the top of the globe and for some wash water to be sucked into the overflow chamber to also flush it out. During cleaning the bottom of the overflow chamber is connected to a drain channel on the receiver globe to permit water to flow out.
For the small-farm pipeline, portable milkers are inserted into this cleaning loop usually by sucking the cleaning solution out of the wash supply tank through the milker claw and outputting from the milker hoses into the choked end of the line. When the water returns to the receiver bowl, the transfer pump returns the water back to the milker's water pickup tank.
Between 1978 and 1994, a 15 km milk pipeline ran between the Dutch island of Ameland and Holwerd on the mainland, of which 8 km beneath the Wadden Sea. Every day, 30,000 litres of milk produced on the island were transported to be processed on the mainland. In 1994, the milk transport was abandoned. [1]
| Source |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Types | ||
| Products | ||
| Containers | ||
| Topics | ||
A carburetor or carburettor is a device that mixes air and fuel for internal combustion engines in an appropriate air–fuel ratio for combustion. The term is sometimes colloquially shortened to carb in the UK and North America or to carby in Australia.
A dairy is a business enterprise established for the harvesting or processing of animal milk – mostly from cows or buffaloes, but also from goats, sheep, horses, or camels – for human consumption. A dairy is typically located on a dedicated dairy farm or in a section of a multi-purpose farm that is concerned with the harvesting of milk.
An air compressor is a pneumatic device that converts power into potential energy stored in pressurized air. By one of several methods, an air compressor forces more and more air into a storage tank, increasing the pressure. When the tank's pressure reaches its engineered upper limit, the air compressor shuts off. The compressed air, then, is held in the tank until called into use. The kinetic energy provided by the compressed air can be used for a variety of applications such as pneumatic tool as it is released air and the tank depressurizes. When tank pressure reaches its lower limit, the air compressor turns on again and re-pressurizes the tank. An air compressor must be differentiated from a pump because it works for any gas/air, while pumps work on a liquid.
A flush toilet is a toilet that disposes of human waste by using the force of water to flush it through a drainpipe to another location for treatment, either nearby or at a communal facility, thus maintaining a separation between humans and their waste. Flush toilets can be designed for sitting or for squatting, in the case of squat toilets. Most modern sewage treatment systems are also designed to process specially designed toilet paper. The opposite of a flush toilet is a dry toilet, which uses no water for flushing.
Dairy farming is a class of agriculture for long-term production of milk, which is processed for eventual sale of a dairy product. Dairy farming has a history that goes back to the early Neolithic era, around the seventh millennium BC, in many regions of Europe and Africa. Before the 20th century, milking was done by hand on small farms. Beginning in the early 20th century, milking was done in large scale dairy farms with innovations including rotary parlors, the milking pipeline, and automatic milking systems that were commercially developed in the early 1990s.
An injector is a system of ducting and nozzles used to direct the flow of a high-pressure fluid in such a way that a lower pressure fluid is entrained in the jet and carried through a duct to a region of higher pressure. It is a fluid-dynamic pump with no moving parts except a valve to control inlet flow. A steam injector is a typical application of the principle used to deliver cold water to a boiler against its own pressure, using its own live or exhaust steam, replacing any mechanical pump. When first developed, its operation was intriguing because it seemed paradoxical, almost like perpetual motion, but it was later explained using thermodynamics. Other types of injector may use other pressurised motive fluids such as air.
Milking is the act of removing milk from the mammary glands of cattle, water buffalo, humans, goats, sheep, and, more rarely, camels, horses and donkeys. Milking may be done by hand or by machine, and requires the animal to be currently or recently pregnant. The milker may refer either to the animal that produces the milk or the person who milks said animal.
In pipeline transportation, pigging is the practice of using pipeline inspection gauges or gadgets, devices generally referred to as pigs or scrapers, to perform various maintenance operations. This is done without stopping the flow of the product in the pipeline.
A somatic cell count (SCC) is a cell count of somatic cells in a fluid specimen, usually milk. In dairying, the SCC is an indicator of the quality of milk—specifically, its low likeliness to contain harmful bacteria, and thus its high food safety. White blood cells (leukocytes) constitute the majority of somatic cells in question. The number of somatic cells increases in response to pathogenic bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus, a cause of mastitis. The SCC is quantified as cells per milliliter. General agreement rests on a reference range of less than 100,000 cells/mL for uninfected cows and greater than 250,000 for cows infected with significant pathogen levels. Several tests like the PortaSCC milk test and The California mastitis test provide a cow-side measure of somatic cell count. The somatic cell count in the milk also increases after calving when colostrum is produced.
In dairy farming a bulk milk cooling tank is a large storage tank for cooling and holding milk at a cold temperature until it can be picked up by a milk hauler. The bulk milk cooling tank is an important piece of dairy farm equipment. It is usually made of stainless steel and used every day to store the raw milk on the farm in good condition. It must be cleaned after each milk collection. The milk cooling tank can be the property of the farmer or be rented from a dairy plant.
The Quadrajet is a four barrel carburetor, made by the Rochester Products Division of General Motors. Its first application was the new-for-1965 Chevy 396ci engine. Its last application was on the 1990 Oldsmobile 307 V8 engine, which was last used in the Cadillac Brougham and full size station wagons made by Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick.
A vacuum sewer or pneumatic sewer system is a method of transporting sewage from its source to a sewage treatment plant. It maintains a partial vacuum, with an air pressure below atmospheric pressure inside the pipe network and vacuum station collection vessel. Valves open and reseal automatically when the system is used, so differential pressure can be maintained without expending much energy pumping. A single central vacuum station can collect the wastewater of several thousand individual homes, depending on terrain and the local situation.
A mud tank is an open-top container, typically made of square steel tube and steel plate, to store drilling fluid on a drilling rig. They are also called mud pits, as they were once simple pits in the earth.
A rotodynamic pump is a kinetic machine in which energy is continuously imparted to the pumped fluid by means of a rotating impeller, propeller, or rotor, in contrast to a positive displacement pump in which a fluid is moved by trapping a fixed amount of fluid and forcing the trapped volume into the pump's discharge. Examples of rotodynamic pumps include adding kinetic energy to a fluid such as by using a centrifugal pump to increase fluid velocity or pressure.
A cryogenic oxygen plant is an industrial facility that creates molecular oxygen at relatively high purity. Oxygen is the most common element in the earth's crust and the second largest industrial gas. This process was pioneered by Dr. Carl von Linde in 1902.
The Bender Machine Works in Hayward, Wisconsin, is a dairy equipment manufacturer that played a major role in the history of the dairy farming business in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s, producing milk pipeline and milk transfer cart components, and washing/vacuum-releasing equipment.
High-density solids pumps are hydrostatically operating machines which displace the medium being pumped and thus create a flow.
Anna Baldwin operated a dairy farm in Newark, New Jersey who was most famous for her Hygienic Glove Milker, patented on February 18, 1879.
