User:Aahuja001/sandbox

Solar Operated Automatic Milk Collection System (AMCU)
An AMCU (Automatic Milk Collection Unit) is a system designed to collect and analyze raw milk from Marginal farmers in a fair and transparent manner in small villages and remote milk collection centers. This system is the most popular in India, which is now the largest producer of milk in the world.

Majority of this milk in India is produced by millions of small farmers who breed very small herds of Milch animals. Everyday these farmers contribute the surplus milk of small Milk Collection Centers, from where this milk is taken to a Chilling Center before being transported to large Dairies for further processing. Here the milk is pasteurized, processed ad packed to be sold as milk and milk products in the market.

1)     RATIONALE
Until recently the milk was tested for its FAT & SNF (solids non fat) contents which forms the basis of payment to the farmers by conventional Chemical methods. These methods were generally time consuming.

With the advent of technology, several methods have been developed to test and analyze large number of samples accurately and in a short time. The most popular method being the Ultrasonic Method because of the cost, reliability, dependability and ease of operations. However, these Ultrasonic Analysers require a source of power to operate.

Solar powered AMCU has thus evolved to overcome the limitations of availability of constant and dependable Electric power through the main grid supply in several remote areas of India.

2)    COMPONENTS
A.      Milk Analyzer – Ekomilk Ultra iBond 5 in 1 Automatic Milk Collection unit is an integrated analyzer having the following components:


 * 1)  Ultrasonic Milk Analyzer which determines FAT, SNF and Added water in Milk. It can accurately measure different types of milk such as Cow, Buffalo, Sheep or Mixed. This requires less than 40 seconds for each analysis. It has a digital display and easy to operate features.
 * 2) Data Processing Unit which runs on embedded firmware, it processes Milk quality and quantity information to calculate a fair price to be paid to the farmer. It has a large capacity to store Milk Collection Data of several hundred vendors. This Data Processing Unit also generate milk bills for the payment to farmers for a given period based on milk contributed by individual farmers.
 * 3) Printer – An embedded printer prints an acknowledgment on a thermal strip of paper acknowledging the receipt of Milk along with details such as Collection Centre Name, Name of the Farmer, Date, Time, Quantity, FAT, SNF, Rate of Milk and Amount Payable to the farmer.
 * 4) Ultrasonic Stirrer – This Ultrasonic Stirrer is used for the de-aeration of fresh milk which may affect the result of analysis. Fresh milk usually has air trapped in it, which must be removed before the milk sample is analyzed for Fat and SNF.
 * 5) GPRS Module – This module is used for the purpose of transmitting Milk Collection Details on Real-Time basis to a Centralized database or send Data at the end of each collection Shift. This device can also download and upload files containing useful    information such as ShiftWise collection details, list of farmers, details of multiple rate policies, operational and Maintenance Data etc.