Among the innovative projects of the KPI students presented to the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, during his visit to our university, the most interesting are technologies and equipment for ultrasonic cavitation milk processing (see photo). This project became the winner of the contest "Sikorsky Challenge" in the category "The best technology solution start-up." You would think, what has that to do with the milk here? But experts think otherwise.
Either way, every person consumes dairy products. And it does not matter what it is – milk, yogurt, sour cream or boiled fermented milk (ryazhanka). Milk products have a great demand in the consumers' market; it would seem that its production works smoothly and without any problems. But this is only at the first blush.
Let's look at the process of making a dairy product from a manufacturer's perspective. Indeed, the processing technology is quite complicated, requires expensive equipment and significant costs. But after implementing this technology once, the manufacturer has a stable output of a ready product. What can significantly affect the manufacturing process? What are the main risks? Knowing the answers to these questions, the manufacturer will protect his business.
One of the main risks for the production is raw material supplying. The resource base decreases every year. This encourages procurement companies and dairy producers to expand the area of the milk collecting. Meanwhile, the milk-collecting cars are forced to receive the milk from small farmers where, unfortunately, the sterility and product quality issues are not in the first place. During a long transportation to the dairy processing plants, under the influence of temperature and presence of microorganisms in the milk, and under other factors, the milk starts to turn sour. What should we do? We can say that there are sterilizers for milk processing. Yes, they exist but they are located directly at the manufacturing plant. And we still need to deliver the milk there.
And then a good idea arose. What if we will install the sterilizer directly on the milk-collecting cars? This would allow transferring a part of the treatment process on the transportation process, thereby reducing the time of receiving of a ready product and guaranteed to ensure the delivery of quality milk at the manufacturing plant. The existing equipment which is huge in size and energy-consuming is not suitable for using directly on the cars. Scientists of the Kiev Polytechnic came to the aid. They offered a cavitation milk sterilizer.
A scientific team, which brings together professionals from the MMI and RTF faculties in the composition of A.V. Movchanuk, V. P. Fesich, I. A. Grishko, A. I. Zelinskyi, I. M. Bernik under the guidance of the Doctor of technical sciences and Professor, O. F. Lugovskyi, engaged in the creation of the ultrasonic cavitation devices for a long time, one of which is a flow-through ultrasonic cavitator for the decontamination of liquids. The energy, released during the collapse of a cavitation bubble inside the liquid, can destroy the particles that fall in her way. And it does not matter whether it is a microorganism – cold milk pasteurization, or fat ball – homogenization of the product.
Why did we emphasize the homogenization of the milk? Experts in the field of food technology claim that the milk absorption ability depends on the size of fat globules. Using the ultrasonic cavitation can disintegrate these fat globules up to 5 microns which ultimately allows obtaining a product with improved properties.
Many companies in the world have been creating ultrasonic cavitators but unlike other scientists, the scientists from the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute have managed to create a flowing low power system with the possibility of the concentration of ultrasonic energy. After all, the more energy you put in the liquid, the more qualitative and quantitative composition of the destroyed microorganisms. These advantages give the possibility to use such equipment on the milk-collecting cars.