DAIRY PLANT

Facilitating the Next Generation of Food and Beverage Engineers.

The new state of the art dairy plant at Cornell provides students and future dairy professionals with vital hands-on experience and supports teaching research and extension programs that benefit processors throughout the country. The state funded project had a six-year lifespan, not unlike other teaching dairy projects where every detail with regard to functionality, adaptability, and aesthetics was thoroughly considered during the conceptual design.

Teaching, research, and extension outreach are the primary focus:

• Operations include both manual swings and automated valves to show future grads a variety of execution methods.
• HMIs can be displayed in classrooms to allow students real time experience with a live dairy.
• The outreach program at Cornell includes a number of workshops in dairy processing including HTST processing, vat pasteurization, and artisan cheesemaking which all make use of the processing equipment for hands-on training of industry professionals throughout the northeast.

The plant also supplies the campus with fluid milk, juice, cider, ice cream, cultured products, and pudding.

The project presented a unique challenge in process piping design in that the piping not only had to be functional, it had to be designed and installed in a manner that complimented the architectural design and also allowed for unobstructed views from both the two-story external glass wall and internal mezzanine viewing hallway.