Milk and Whey

GEA Westfalia Separator process technology has proven itself at every level in the dairy industry – because the products’ quality is ensured and nothing more is left to be desired with regard to the process economy.

Learn more about our process technology solutions on these pages

• Bacterially clarified milk
• Clarified whey and whey cream
• Clarified raw milk
• Extended Shelf Life milk (ESL milk)
• Skimmed milk and cream
• Standardized milk 

• Skimming cream from milk
• Standardization
• Whey clarification and skimming
• Bacteria removal from milk

Raw milk contains around 4 percent fat. In order to produce non-fat milk, this cream must first be separated. Here, a differentiation is made between warm milk separation at temperatures between 50 and 60 °C and cold milk separation which takes place at temperatures between 4 and 30 °C.

GEA Westfalia Separator supports both these processes with the Westfalia Separator^® procool system having been developed as a future oriented element for cold milk separation. The cream skimming separators from the Westfalia Separator^® Hyvol^® proplus line set new standards when it comes to product protection and yield maximization.

All separators are equipped with the Westfalia Separator^® Hydro-Soft-Stream^® system. For your milk this means the lowest possible feed pressure, gentle product intake, the lowest possible shearing forces and therefore the highest possible separation efficiency. The Westfalia Separator^® Hydro-Soft-Stream^® system employs no maintenance intensive, mechanical seals and requires no additional cooling water.

With the latest generation of Westfalia Separator^® standomat^® standardization systems, GEA Westfalia Separator is able for the first time to offer a standardization unit for milk fat to milk protein. The inline and online system regularly measures and regulates the defined specifications directly during the production process. Limit values are precisely maintained and resources are better employed. Sampling is no longer required – laboratory checks can be eliminated.

The newly developed optical process used for this can be flexibly applied to consumer milk, standardized cheese milk, yoghurt products, standardized cream products, recombined milk products as well as condensed milk and coffee cream.

In order to achieve the greatest level of process technological and economical processing, whey must first be separated from milk fat and cheese fines. Separators from GEA Westfalia Separator safely and efficiently perform this task. In doing this they not only perform their underlying separation functions but also increase overall plant yields thanks to their recovery and preparation of contents such as cheese fines or lactoalbumin.

Bacteria, yeasts and mold spores can heavily contaminate milk products. This makes reliable bacterial clarification of milk that much more important. The range of applications runs from single-stage bacteria removal, across a two-stage process and up to special bacterial clarification of milk and a targeted bacterial clarification of cheese milk as well as the treatment of whey concentrate. Beyond this, separators employing the Westfalia Separator^® proplus module to recover valuable proteins from solid residue can also be employed in conjunction with bacteria removal.