Potential of solar industrial process heating in dairy industry in India and consequent carbon mitigation

The total process heating potential in term of useful energy requirement in dairy sector in India has been estimated at 6.40 PJ/annum which reduces to 4.50 PJ per annum if the process heating requirement is restricted to only pasteurization stage of milk processing. The corresponding solar collector area requirement for process heating in dairy industry in India is estimated in the range of 1.54-1.83 million m2 with the average solar fraction estimated in the range 0.18-0.32. The use of solar energy for meeting milk processing related thermal energy demand is expected to mitigate (32-144 thousand tonnes) of CO2 emissions annually.