Valorisation of water use in aquaculture using multi trophic systems

The AQUAVAL Project aims to develop technological solutions for the treatment of freshwater aquaculture plants.

The system assumes the use of organisms of different trophic levels: bacteria, microalgae and bivalves. The technological solutions will be combined in order to obtain a complete treatment system, to remove pollutants and to value effluents following the concept of circular economy.

The water resulting from the treatment system must be of sufficient quality to be recycled / reused in the production plant or to be discharged into the natural waterways. The treatment system will include the application of aerobic granule technology combined with other processes, such as anammox or microalgae.

The resulting water will be sent to a bivalve filtration unit in order to test the growth capacity of these organisms and at the same time improve the efficiency of the proposed system. In this step of water purification, adult bivalves will be used, but eventually endangered species of freshwater mussels may also be used, thus promoting biodiversity and the conservation of endangered species.

Pilot-scale validation will assess the economic, environmental and production performance of the system. In addition to the economic benefits, a reduction of the environmental impact is expected, which will promote the social perception of aquaculture companies.

Objectives
AquaVal main objective is to develop new technological solutions to obtain water for recycling and reuse in fresh water aquaculture farms generated from the treatment of their effluents, comprising integrated treatments based on bacteria, microalgae and/or bivalves. The obtained integrated system will be evaluated in terms of performance and epidemiological and health impacts. Figure 1 shows the interactions between WPs, whichare designed to form a treatment train of possibilities that may be used for different scenarios alone or in combination.

Research objectives:
- To establish the conditions for stable operation of a systems based on aerobic granular biomass to remove the micropollutants (VMP (veterinary medical products), e.g., antibiotics);
- To establish the conditions for stable operation of the anammox process operated at extremely low nitrogen concentration and low temperature;
- To define the optimal operational conditions to set up a filtration unit based on freshwater bivalves;
- To -develop new biotechnological approaches for wastewater treatment with simultaneous recovery of water suitable for reuse in the aquaculture;
- To evaluate the studied processes at pilot scale by operating them in an aquaculture plant in terms of solids, nitrogen and micropollutants removal, as well as fish health, welfare, production cost and quality of final product.

Biotechnological solutions for the treatment of water in freshwater aquaculture facilities.