Recirculating aquaculture systems (SRA/RAS) are part of the trending technologies in fish breeding and enable effective as well as environmentally-friendly cultivation of fish in controlled production facilities. After all, these are state-of-the-art water treatment systems that are unaffected by external influences due to their closed circulation system. Moreover, they require very little space. Another important feature here is that only a minimal amount of water has to be replaced each day, which conserves resources.
In 2018 ANFACO (a Spanish research and development institute for the canning and aquaculture sector) needed a professional RAS system to optimize and expand its services. Apart from the continuous monitoring and optimization of temperature, salt and oxygen content, pH value, alkalinity, and chemical composition, solids have to be filtered out and the wastewater treated with a biofilter. This project also involved special requirements. Salt had to be added to the water in the individual breeding tanks to simulate seawater because the company is located far from the coast. The RAS process and the aquaculture room were to be located on 2 different floors and the process data had to be accessible at any time by cell phone or tablet via the JUMO Device App. Text message alerts were requested for deviations from setpoint values.
Recirculating aquaculture system at ANFACO
All requirements could be implemented with an intelligent complete solution from JUMO under the leadership of our Spanish subsidiary. Here, the JUMO mTRON T central processing unit is responsible for the control, automation, and visualization of the RAS system. The JUMO AQUIS touch S multichannel measuring device together with the JUMO CTI-500 take over monitoring of the parameters for water analysis and inductive conductivity measurement. A total of 6 measurements are carried out simultaneously in the device − some of them are also controlled (2× pH, 2× inductive conductivity, 1× redox, 1× oxygen measurement). This way, measurands such as water temperature, salinity, and other critical values can be set and monitored. The logging data is sent to the customer's data center for analysis and visualized via a screen/tablet in the aquaculture room. Remote access is possible via the JUMO Device App.
Control of the RAS system by the JUMO mTRON T
Control panel JUMO mTRON T
A solution with the innovative JUMO variTRON family as the successor to the JUMO mTRON T would also be possible.
Cooperation between ANFACO, JUMO, and the technical agencies resulted in an extremely safe and reliable RAS system that creates optimal breeding and living conditions for the fish. The customer's needs and requirements were perfectly met by the complete solution, which proves that innovative JUMO technology can be used in almost all industries and areas.
