When CHEMMAT’s Dr Amar Auckaili and Prof Mohammed Farid were looking for a talented student engineer to work on their novel thermal storage heat exchanger, they were fortunate that Omar Mustafa was assigned to the project. Omar who had already proved his excellent academic ability with his undergraduate coursework, was now able to apply his heat transfer and fluid mechanics knowledge, together with a strong sense of engineering insight and creativity, to solve a complex problem relevant to the dairy farms. NZ regulations requires that milk be cooled to 10°C or below within four hours of the commencement of milking. Commercial systems were expensive and consumed large amounts of energy. The novel heat exchanging system, incorporating a water-based phase change material, is designed to use the advantage of latent heat absorption and release, and thus be significantly less energy consuming.  Omar designed and implemented innovative ‘chiller fingers’ for the system that resulted in considerable increases in cooling capacity. The outcomes of this project provide a way for milk quality to be improved and compliant to the new regulations while easing the burden on hard-working farmers and the electricity grid. Omar has recently completed his degree and is now continuing to shape the dairy industry by starting his career at Synlait Milk in the South Island.

Congratulations Omar Mustafa for being one of two Finalists in this year’s ENVI Awards ‘Engineering Student of the Year‘ for his work on Milk Cooling.

This award is for an undergraduate engineering student or group of students who demonstrate outstanding design and innovation in their final year tertiary project.

Photo from the Left: CHEMMAT student Omar Mustafa, CHEMMAT’s Dr Amar Auckaili, one of Omar’s supervisors