MABIT - an industrial R&D program for marine biotechnology in northern Norway
Period covered - start date: 2020Period covered - end date: 2021
Project's coordinator: Aquaculture Innovations AS
NMBU contact - Volha Shapaval
Project partners:
Aquaculture Innovations AS
Salmon industry has experienced steady growth over the last two decades, but challenges with salmon lice and local ecological impact have led to high challenges with further growth. The high costs have led to an increased interest in the development of land-based fish farms. Today it is approx. 27 plants that are being planned in Norway. The plants are planned with an annual production of 2,000 - 30,000 tonnes of salmon. SINTEF shows in its report «Impact assessment of land-based salmon-food fish and post-smolt» farms with an annual production of 1 000 tonnes of salmon producing 16 500 tonnes of sludge with 1% dry matter content (TS). The establishment of land-based plants creates a need and interest in cleaning aquaculture wastewater. Sludge from the aquaculture industry is nutritious with a high content of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Due to costs, most of the sludge is used as fertilizer. Due to the upcoming large increase in aquaculture there is a need for a more sustainable utilization of aquaculture sludge.
The SLUDGErecover project aims to identify the possibility for utilizing aquaculture sludge for the production of high-quality biomass. The project will focus on investigating a possibility for the utilization of the sludge nutrients by microorganisms (bacteria, yeast and filamentous fungi) and algae. In addition, projects will carry out a preliminary process design for a possible bioprocess, propose key instrumentation for the process and make a preliminary evaluation of it economical viability.
