A large regional fluid milk bottling facility has received orders for 40,000 gallons of whole milk, 65,000 gallons of reduced fat milk, 25,000 gallons of lowfat milk and 28,000 gallons of nonfat milk. The orders are sub-divided into different package sizes that will be filled on different machines. For the whole milk it is desired to fill 25,875 gallons, 25,000 gallons, 4,000 quarts, and 10,000 pint containers. The reduced fat orders are for 54,500 gallons, 12,000 gallons and 72,000 pints for school milk. All of the lowfat milk is to be packaged in gallon containers. With the nonfat milk the order is for 24,000 gallons and 8,000 gallons.

The company receives 1.55 million pounds of milk containing 3.65% milk fat, 3.08% protein, 5.03% lactose, 0.72% mineral ash and 87.52% water. During standardization of the milk the average milk fat content obtained in the cream is 37.55%. Each raw milk silo has a capacity of 600,000 pounds of milk. The company maintains 5 pasteurized product silos; two have a capacity of 25,000 gallons, one has the capacity of 15,000 gallons and the final two have a capacity of 10,000 gallons each. Because of the limits in pasteurized product capacity the HTST operator must continually shift between products throughout the day, planning the day to change products approximately every two hours. The HTST has a capacity of 10,000 gallons per hour. Each time that the HTST system diverts flow during a product changeover from milk to water or water to milk approximately 200 gallons of milk ends up going to the drain because of the residual volume held in the plate that is potentially diluted with water. The automatic water valve is set to turn on when the constant level tank reaches 12% of total volume to prevent cavitation of the pumps and additional possibilities at diverted flow.

The milk is chased from the final outlet of the HTST valve cluster to the pasteurized storage tanks utilizing air blows. The residual entrainment volume after utilizing the air blows is typically 0.45% of the volume of the lines.

There are two gallon fillers within the facility. The newer filler capable of running at 65 gallons per minute is overfilling each container by an average of 14 grams. The older filler is currently utilized at a rate of about 45 gallons per minute and is short-filling each container by about 25 grams. The pint filler is in need of service and is damaging an average of one container for every 400 filled. This pint filler can be run at a maximum speed of 90 cartons per minute. The half-gallon filler can be run at a maximum of 80 containers per minute. The quart filler is the oldest machine in the facility at has a maximum capacity of 110 containers per minute. The caser associated with the quart filler tends to mis-case product about once per 250 cases of product. This results in disposal of all containers in the case. A case will hold 16 quarts of product. The gallon filler operators must switch between products an average of 8 times during the day to allow the HTST operator an opportunity to keep the pasteurized tanks filled.

Losing 1,600 gal/day