Milk Producer - March 2010 - (Page 28)

FARMENERGY By Bill Dimmick/Photos By David Barr Heating With Cow Power New technology taps into old heat source to produce energy savings on modern farms medieval farm family, eking out a meagre livelihood tilling the land of a feudal lord more than 800 years ago, enjoyed few creature comforts. Historians have documented how family members slept on straw spread over the dirt floor of their one or two-room wooden hut, and ventilated smoke from the cooking fire through a hole in the roof. When temperatures plunged and snow swirled, the peasant family routinely herded livestock into their crude hut. Since livestock give off body heat, they would share living space—despite the unimaginable stench—with cattle, sheep and pigs until spring. Modern milk producers can now employ 21st-century technology to tap the same basic principle European peasants used to help keep them warm during the Middle Ages—without having to herd Holsteins into their kitchens. Half a dozen Canadian dairy farms are now using livestock-generated heat to warm their homes using relatively simple technology. It extracts heat from milking operations and pipes it into their houses from their parlours. Heat recovery on dairy farms has been around for decades. The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs published a factsheet in the 1980s explaining how heat energy removed from milk during cooling can be transferred to water. Written by energy engineer R.G. Winfield, the factsheet detailed how one litre of milk could heat one litre of water to between 50 and 60 degrees C during the milk cooling process. This water could be further heated through conventional means to the required 75 degrees C for sanitizing milking equipment. Some of the warm water could be diverted to such uses as cow prepping, calf feeding and showers without further heating. However, Winfield estimated, few dairy farmers could use more than half the milk-derived heat, given the available technology more than two decades ago. “No common external uses are evident or economically viable at this time for most Ontario 28 | March 2010 | MilkPRODUCER

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Milk Producer - March 2010

Milk Producer - March 2010
Contents
Editor's Notes
DFO Chair's Message
Provincial Perspectives
Dairy Update
DFC Policy
Farm Finance
DFC Promotion
Heating With Cow Power
Processor Spotlight
Issues Update
Research
Applied Science
Ruminations
Markets
New 'N' Noted
Back Forty

Milk Producer - March 2010