A benchmarking tool to help dairy owners and operators use energy and water as efficiently as possible in their facilities was released today by scientists at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The BEST-Dairy allows a user to calculate energy and water use intensity and obtain a benchmarking score for the selected plant, as compared with the best available references that researchers identified from a national and global data.

“A higher benchmark score normally means higher savings potential from future efficiency improvement in the benchmarked plant,” says Tim Xu, who leads the project. The BEST-Dairy is intended to serve as a quick assessment of relative energy and water efficiency, which may also help to identify potential savings opportunities in the plant and processes.

The developers of BEST Dairy are Tengfang (Tim) Xu, Joris Flapper, Jing Ke, and Jayant Sathaye. The research was supported by the Industrial/Agricultural/Water (IAW) End-Use Energy Efficiency Program of the Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER), California Energy Commission.

For more information, contact:

Tim Xu
TTXu@lbl.gov 
510.486.7810

Download the BEST Dairy Tool and report, “User’s Manual for BEST-Dairy: Benchmarking and Energy/water-Saving Tool (BEST) for the Dairy Processing Industry. BEST-Dairy Version 1.2.” by Xu, Tengfang, Jing Ke, and Jayant Sathaye.