MilkHub Cleaning Performance

What’s Cleaning all about?

The MilkHub system monitors the cleaning of equipment for each stall during the sequence of cleaning cycles that make up the cleaning scheme used at the completion of milking

Effective cleaning requires adequate cleaning volume, flow rate, detergent usage and temperature (hot wash). These requirements are largely met by proper plant design based on industry recommendations and standards that fix water reservoir capacity, heating capacity, receiver capacity, milk pump capacity, and jetter operation. Maintenance and human factors determine how effectively the plant operates to the designed performance level.

The cleaning sequence is monitored by the Sensing Unit to determine poor cleaning. The Sensing Unit position ensures poor cleaning can be attributed to the individual stall, at the most practical “upstream” position, to ensure all components are cleaning. A measurement in the bulk milk line for example may fail to detect that an individual jetter is not functioning correctly.

Ineffective cleaning can result in poor milk hygiene and milk down-grade penalties.

How does the MilkHub detect poor cleaning performance?

The cleaning process generally employs a sequence of cycles involving cold rinsing and hot or cold washes. Washing cycles include the use of acid or alkaline detergents.

For any cycle effective cleaning must have sufficient volume and flow. Sufficient volume is needed to transport milk and milk fat residues out of the plant. Sufficient flow is needed to properly wet internal voids and ceilings associated with plant geometry.

Hot water and detergent are used for some cleaning cycles. When hot water is used it should exceed 65 deg C to melt milk fat solids. Detergent is typically used in one wash every cleaning sequence.

The MilkHub measures each cycle of every cleaning sequence every milking every day. It ensures cleaning performance that falls below the requirements above is detected.

The following 2 graphs illustrate 2 useful hot wash cleaning performance measures. To avoid clutter, the graphs only show measurements for stalls 1 through 10 from the 70-stall test-farm installation.

In general certain minimum values need to be exceeded to ensure adequate cleaning. In addition uniform height indicates all stalls are balanced.

The top graph shows the cleaning flow where a high value approaching 100% is desirable. This is very uneven and somewhat lower than 100% and indicates some stalls need attention. Stall 10 is not being cleaned at all. The most likely cause is inadequate jetter flow due to poorly adjusted or faulty equipment.

The bottom graph indicates the hot wash cleaning temperature. This is fairly uneven and some stalls fall below to the 65 deg C minimum. This also is a concern and should be looked at. Since hot water is reticulated at the hot water cylinder temperature the variation is most likely due to very slow flow and with associated cooling in the long milk tube. Here stall 10 does not register since no cleaning cycle was detected.

Many other useful measurements relating to hot wash and other cycles are made but not shown here for the sake of simplicity.