Project Evaluation: Milk Chilling Units in Pakistan

In one of our SEPS projects in Pakistan, Winrock International installed four biogas plants as a sustainable solution for powering milk refrigeration and processing units at dairy farms. Further to a follow-up phase supported by WISIONS, the outcomes of the project implementation have now been evaluated.

A field study carried out in December 2014 aimed to deliver information about the operational performance of the installed biogas plants in Pakistan, successful practices and possible challenges, the sustainability impact and overall lessons learned during the project activities.

Among the lessons learned during the evaluation were the following aspects:

  • The applied designs proved technically adequate for the conditions of the targeted dairy farms
  • A significant share of diesel and LPG consumption can be displaced by the new technology, which leads to monetary savings ranging from 300,000 to 640,000 PKK per year, depending on the digester size

There are still some issues that could be improved, for example

  • The identification of measures required to ensure that transportation tasks (manure, water, bio-slurry) can be adequately fulfilled on a daily basis
  • The quality and appropriate installation of monitoring devices, particularly gas flow meters

More information, including other results of the evaluation survey, are available on our corresponding project page: Powering milk chilling units with biogas.

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