Milk Auto-Scalder

Description

For nursing mothers, it is convient to pump and store breastmilk so that other caretakers can feed their babies. However, some mothers produce too much lipase, an enzyme that breaks down fats. Excessive lipase causes the milk to sour quickly, even when it is frozen.
One way to deal with high lipase is to use heat to deactivate it, a.k.a. scalding. If heated to 82 degrees Celsius, the lipase will no longer sour the milk. Usually this is done on a stove, either with a thermometer or watching for the milk to start to bubble.
However, doing this daily can be a tedious chore to do manually. Furthermore, it requires a degree of precision, as overheating the milk can destroy essential nutrients.
The aim of this project to design a device to scald milk quickly and easily. It needs to be easy to build and quick to design from off-the-shelf components. On activation, the device will heat the milk to the correct temperature, then shut off and use a fan to quickly cool the milk off.

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Peter Thompson • 12/08/2022 at 19:17 • 0 comments

First thing we need is a small tea kettle to contain and heat the milk. We want a small capacity and low cost. The smallest I find is a 350 milliliter capacity - normally we're heating less than 200mL but this is close enough. These are designed like an insulated steel mug. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L9PG85M
For the controller, any general purpose board will suffice. I pull an Arduino out of the parts bin.
We need a relay to turn the kettle on and off. These are easy to find - I get a pack for future projects. https://www.ebay.com/itm/292280749362
I want a small fan to cool the milk off faster after the heat cycle finishes. https://www.ebay.com/itm/381774063056
I need a small 5V power supply to run the controller. I can find one in my parts bin.
I need a waterproof thermometer to track the temperature. https://www.ebay.com/itm/182671981462
Total build cost is about $45.

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Dan Maloney wrote 12/08/2022 at 22:50

I honestly never heard of excess lipase, that's fascinating! Just curious, is the goal of the scalding step to denature the lipase? Seems reasonable, but just wondering.

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Peter Thompson wrote 12/09/2022 at 16:58

Thanks for your comment - excess lipase is pretty uncommon but it's just one of those things that can make parents' lives harder than it has to be. I don't know the science behind it but I read that scalding deactivates lipase so milk stays good longer - probably by breaking apart the enzyme. Other nutrients are destroyed by scalding as well, but if most of the baby's milk is fresh it's not a concern.

Are you sure? yes | no

Milk Auto-Scalder

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