Projects:2016s1-181 Solar Aquaponics

Project Team

Supervisors

Rastko Zivanovic

Said Al-Sarawi

Group members

Hassan Alabdullah

Kaidi Zou

Project Introduction

Background

The term aquaponics is used for an agriculture system involving the simultaneous cultivation of plants and aquatic animals, such as fish, in a symbiotic environment. Aquaponics systems can be used in outdoor set up or indoor aquaponics greenhouses.

Motivation

Labour and energy usage is the largest cost factor for aquaponics systems. Energy consumption varies largely with the layout and purpose of the system. The project investigates a novel approach of using solar energy to provide electric energy required for sensing and monitoring an aquaponics system.

Project Aim

This project aims to verify the feasibility of using solar PV system to supply the consumption of the aquaponics system and detect how to predict and monitoring the dynamic condition of the system by software and electronic sensors.

Software Model Simulation

model explanation

The new model add silver perch in fish type, add strawberry, mint, and zucchini in plant type, which are new introduced in the new aquaponic model. Temperature are added as one factors to determine the simulation outcome. pH changes simulation was added. Water flow and Energy flow were adjusted to satisfy the new grow media and NFT combination model. The solar radiance data was re-written base on the sensor-detected data. The following data and chart do not reflect the real amount or number, but the ratio between each factor.

Fish and plants simulation

The fish and plants simulation reflects the relationship between each index, by choosing different fish type and plant type we could get the simulation graphic. The data used in this model is from the research of UVI [8].

The silver perch growth model was set based on (Silver perch - aquaculture prospects 2016): The optimum temperature range for commercial production is 23-28° C. In a good growing climate, silver perch can be raised to market size of 600-800g in around 18 months. 5×〖(1+x)〗^545=700

Figure 1. Fish simulation

The plants simulation is designed to reflect the plant weight change in growing bed and plant harvest weight under the influence of nitrate concentration from nitric cycle; also, the curve for daily adding water will reflect as water consumption will affect the water circulating system. The water needs to be adding daily mainly due to evaporation and water leakage when circulating

Figure 2. plant simulation

pH simulation

pH is an important index, as the fish and plants could only survive in a proper range of pH. The pH changing simulation is set based on previous study and my understanding of the system. Adding water would increase the pH, as the Adelaide water pH is slightly higher than 7, while fish waste and the feed is under 7, so it slightly decrease pH.

Figure 3. pH change simulation.PNG

Water cycle simulation

The water flow would increase after adding NFT to the model, the fish tank and agriculture area is larger than before, so the evaporation is much more, the water level should keep balance ideally, hence the daily adding water should increase to keep the water level balance.

Figure 4. Water cycle simulation simulation.PNG

Conclusion

Future work

Software Model

First, the software model is not able to simulate when two or more types of fishes exist, as well as plant types. I was trying to figure it out, but it was much more complicated than I expected. Second, the model was set based on UVI’s research and our understanding of solar aquaponics, it have not been proofed whether it could work well in real solar aquaponics environment, it should be verified by experiments before it could be used. Finally, due to the limitation of our knowledge and time, it may have some defects in modelling the system I would apology for that.

System implementation =

First, the software model is not able to simulate when two or more types of fishes exist, as well as plant types. I was trying to figure it out, but it was much more complicated than I expected. Second, the model was set based on UVI’s research and our understanding of solar aquaponics, it have not been proofed whether it could work well in real solar aquaponics environment, it should be verified by experiments before it could be used. Finally, due to the limitation of our knowledge and time, it may have some defects in modelling the system I would apology for that.