Curding of milk in incubator utilizing latent heat of lauric acid in winter
Jagadeeswara Reddy Vennapusa, Jitendra Singh, Sujay Chattopadhyay
Abstract
Abstract The maintenance of incubation temperature (30°C‐50°C) for growth of culture is essential during fermentation of milk to curd. This report discusses the issue of maintaining constant temperature of milk for formation of curd using lauric acid (m.p. 45.02°C and f.p. 40.21°C) as phase change material (PCM). Lauric acid possesses phase transition enthalpy, 189.43 kJ kg −1 and was thermally stable till 140°C. A known dimension of a temperature controlling packaging (TCP) box was made by taking 240 g of PCM uniformly distributed inside six polyethylene packets (40 g each) of dimensions identical with that of inner walls of the corrugated box and the packets were placed along inner walls of TCP box. The TCP box containing packets with molten PCM could maintain the temperature of 150 g milk (placed inside box) in between 50°C and 30°C for 160 minutes and helped in curd formation, while the whole assembly was exposed to 1°C of ambient temperature.