Dairy milk fouling detection using electrical resistance tomography.

Fouling during dairy milk processing presents a significant challenge, leading to energy inefficiency and product contamination.This study investigated the potential of Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) to detect fouling in dairy milk processing systems in a laboratory study.The laboratory setup consisted of a tank with 16 sensors and saline water with a conductivity of 5.23 mS/cm as the working fluid.Stainless steel cups were CNC-cut and loaded with foulants to match the varying fouling layer thicknesses, and were positioned in the tank to simulate fouling.Three distinct fouling thicknesses were generated by heating skim milk and whey protein at 80C for various time periods.A reference measurement was obtained using a clean stainless-steel cup, and subsequent measurements with fouled cups were compared to generate conductivity maps.These tomographic images were statistically analysed and demonstrated a significant difference between the reference and fouled states.This study elucidates the potential of ERT for identifying fouling through changes in conductivity, and the tomograms clearly differentiate between the three fouling levels.Future research will focus on determining the minimum detectable fouling thickness and establishing a more precise correlation between the fouling layer thickness and conductivity changes and techniques such as Convolutional Neural networks.This approach offers a promising, noninvasive method for monitoring fouling in real time, potentially providing significant benefits to the dairy industry.