ELOXIRAS®: Boosting Recirculating Aquaculture Industry
Aquaculture industry appears to be an interesting alternative to fulfil the increasing global demand of marine species without spoiling natural resources. The aquaculture production within Europe offered 1.26 million tons of aquaculture products in 2015 (Eurostat), 70% of which came from marine areas. Recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) are emerging as an advantageous technology to provide adequate culture water quality at inland hatchery and growing facilities. Since its introduction, RAS production has increased in volume and species with a 9.56% CAGR, and has a worldwide market estimated at 449.9 M€.
Although the RAS concept is an advantageous culture process that allows the control of key farming parameters, it requires high biomass densities to become profitable, which involves two important drawbacks: 1) a wide variety of pollutants as nitrogenous compounds (ammonia, nitrite and nitrate), organic matter and pathogens are generated due to fish excretion and decomposition of uneaten feed, implying fast accumulation of toxic metabolised compounds in low water volumes; 2) limited efficacy in the removal of these compounds by the conventional water treatment processes. Therefore, RAS end users require cost-efficient technologies able to deal with these key issues to boost their competitiveness. Market conventional water treatment technologies for RAS facilities are mainly based on bio-filtration and ozone, but they show efficacy fluctuations and start-up periods that increase the production stages and their costs. Based on an electrochemical oxidation technology, APRIA Systems is upgrading an innovative water treatment concept specially developed to improve the productivity of marine RAS used by the exponentially growing aquaculture industry – Electrochemical Oxidation in the Recirculating Aquaculture Systems Industry (ELOXIRAS: www.eloxiras.com). ELOXIRAS® allows the efficient removal of all the highly concerned pollutants in RAS, such as total ammonia nitrogen (TAN), nitrite, dissolved organic matter, bacteria and viruses, without the addition of chemicals or heat and with no change in water composition. Uniquely electricity and the catalytic properties of the electrode materials are required to achieve water purification.
ELOXIRAS project has been satisfactorily executed, making relevant progress in all WPs. The system has been optimized and upgraded before the pilot construction. Complementarily, re-engineering activities have led to a product with major versatility and minimum fails. Advances were done in pre and post-treatment requirements towards minimizing the CAPEX and OPEX. The certification assessment has revealed that ELOXIRAS requires CE marking for its distribution. Dissemination and exploitation of the product have been promoted thorough ELOXIRAS execution, at EU level and beyond (OTF programme), gaining the attention of several potential clients and stakeholders. But in the end, the aim of the project it to bring an innovative product to the market.
In this sense, great progress has been made on product definition and standardization. Four ELOXIRAS® series were defined regarding its market applications:
- MINI: designed for small-scale operations as hatcheries, large aquariums or R&D and innovation facilities.
- HYBRID: Ideal for large facilities.
- BIO: For quarantine and biosecurity operations.
- LOGISTIC: Designed to be integrated in transport platforms, such as trucks or well-boats, for live animals in logistic operations.
Complementarily, ELOXIRAS® is commercialized based on functionalities:
- Concept, provides the core functionalities of ELOXIRAS®.
- Basic, offers the entire ELOXIRAS® system with manual control, ideal for research purposes.
- Comfort, the equipment is fully automated.
- 4.0 with fully automated system, it also includes remote control via web browser.
