Excerpted from Solution Nation: One Nation is Disproportionately Responding to the World’s Most Intractable Problems
BioFishency has developed a plug-and-play recycling system designed to efficiently remove feces and residual feed; replace carbon dioxide with atmospheric oxygen; and, convert ammonia into nitrate to use as a fertilizer. Recycling existing water requires approximately 90% less water than the flow through method. Water efficiency can also be measured relative to feed: Recycling requires about 0.5 cubic meters of water per kilogram of feed, half as much water as the flow through method requires. Thus, twice the number of fish can be raised at the same fish farm. Indeed, BioFishency can claim credit for doubling production at a client fish farm in Taiwan.
Recycling stabilizes water temperatures much better than introducing torrential volumes of foreign water. Tremendous amounts of electricity are saved when water pumping and heating are dramatically curtailed.
The BioFishency Solution
How does BioFishency accomplish all of this? Let’s touch on a few of the steps. Submerged treatment filters are used to remove feces and other solids from the fish pens. In terms of removing ammonia and carbon dioxide, a two-pronged approach is taken. First, plastic-shaped biological media that sports 200 square meters of surface area for each cubic meter of media is submerged in the water to attract bacteria. Second, thousands of one-millimeter macaroni-shaped beads float on the water and absorb bacteria. These beads are coated with hydrophilic properties and collectively have 4,000 square meters of surface area per cubic meter. The combination of the biological media and the hydrophilic macaroni-like beads unfurl an enormous bacteria bonding blanket.
BioFishency is currently exploring the replacement of biologics with electrical chemistry, which would convert ammonia into nitrogen gas with electrical current. If such transition is achieved, the recycling process will become temperature agnostic, the intermediate step of producing nitrate for fertilizer will be bypassed, and new markets (such as salmon and trout farming) will become available.
Since its founding in March 2013, BioFishency has installed its systems in water-deprived regions of the world such as Bangladesh, the Congo, Palestinian territories and Iraq. (BioFishency walked its Iraqi client through the installation process via WhatsApp.) As discussed earlier, much more opportunity beckons: Norway’s Nofima has installed over 1,000 fish farms and Denmark expects 90% of its aquaculture production to come from recirculating systems.
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