22 Condensed Milk and Milk Powder 



General Plan of Factory. — Most of the condensing factories 

 are either one or two story buildings. In the case of two-story 

 buildings the first floor is usually devoted to the boiler and engine 

 rooms, vat room, well room, filling, sealing and packing rooms. On 

 the second floor are installed the pan room, store room for sugar 

 and box shooks, the tinshop and possibly the offices. A basement 

 is sometimes provided- and used for the storing of condensed milk. 



Fig. 4 illustrates a floor plan of a milk condensing factory with 

 a capacity of fifty thousand pounds of milk daily. All operating 

 rooms are located on one floor. The arrangement of machinery 

 permits of the handling of the milk on the gravity plan or with 

 pumps, according to the topography of the site and the elevation of 

 the rooms. The receiving room floor and the platform which accom- 

 modates the vacuum pans, should be seven to eight feet above the 

 main floor. In order to take care of storage of water, sugar, tin 

 cans, barrels and box shooks, there should be a second floor over 

 the well room and the filling, sealing and sterilizing room. The 

 ceiling of these rooms should be not less than sixteen feet above 

 the floor. 



The rooms are so arranged as to necessitate the minimum ex- 

 penditure of machinery, conveyors and labor. All work rooms open 

 on the railway switch, and the storage room is accessible by two 

 elevators. The well room, where most of the steam is needed, is 

 next to the boiler room, so as to minimize condensation in the steam 

 pipes. If the main steam pipes are properly insulated, this arrange- 

 ment should furnish the vacuum pans with dry steam. The floor 

 in the boiler room should be two feet below the main floor, in order 

 to give additional fall for the condensation water from jacket and 

 coils of the vacuum pans to the boiler feed tank. 



The partition between the receiving room and testing room is 

 equipped with a cabinet, opening on both sides so that the sample 

 bottles can be placed on the shelves in the receiving room, and taken 

 off the shelves in the test room. 



From the weigh cans on the receiving platform the milk runs 

 direct into the hot wells, which are sufficient in number to conven- 

 iently divide the milk into batches and to heat the milk with the 

 least possible delay. The capacity of the vacuum pumps is aug- 

 mented by their close proximity to the vacuum pans and the hot- 



