Increased utilization of water and residual raw material from slaughter on process boats

In recent years, the aquaculture industry has had an increasing focus on the utilization of resources and residual raw materials to become a more sustainable industry. To be a part of this development, we will develop a system for increased utilization of resources related to the slaughter of fish on process boats. The project goal will be threefold. The first sub-goal will be to develop a separation method for recycling water from the slaughter process on process boats. The second sub-goal will be to develop a method for utilizing the precipitated blood for use in animal feed. The final goal of the project will be to scale up the system to be able to be used in practice on process boats. The separation method must also meet the following requirements: 1. The ability to operate on a boat during transport 2. No effect on meat quality parameters, such as color, fatty acid content and taste 3. The water must be sufficiently clean to be reusable The project is a collaboration between Brynsløkken AS, Napier, HL Skjong, Nofima and NMBU. We will have a interdisciplinary working group with many different areas of expertise, which will give the project a very good knowledge base. The work is divided into four work packages: 1. Develop a separation method for blood water - how to get rid of blood, particles and pathogens efficiently and safely? 2. Validation of separation method - can we be sure that the method we have developed does not in any way damage or impair the quality of the fish meat? 3. Further utilization of blood proteins - how to go from blood to feed? 4. Upscaling system - how should the system work in practice on the process boat? If we manage to achieve the goals in this PhD project, we will be able to utilize the resources in the harvesting process much better than what we do today. This could increase value creation in the industry, both in that the water resources can be used several times and in that we can utilize the blood for nutrients.

The aquaculture industry is growing, and there is an increased focus on recycling of resources and utilization of residual raw materials. Slaughtering is one of the processes that uses enormous amounts of water to bleed the fish out after blugging. Since this water is rapidly saturated with blood, and may contain pathogens, this water is not currently being reused. Today, the water containing blood and fish remains from process boats are transported to waste stations on shore where the water is managed according to national regulations. Process boats use massive amounts of energy to constantly cool down new batches of water for the purpose. Both the water and the raw residual material from the blood are sources that could be utilized to a much larger degree than it is today, if there was a system developed to perform this task. In this PhD-project, we wish to explore potential methods of separating the blood and other fish remains from the water, to be able to recycle both the water and the residual raw material. The method developed must fulfil the following criteria; 1. The ability to operate on a boat under transport 2. No effect on the meat quality parameters, like color, fatty acid contents and taste 3. The water must be sufficiently clean and disinfected to be re-used 4. The isolated proteins from the residual raw material must be safe and possible for animals to digest to be a possible source of proteins. Our goal for the project will be to develop a system for separation of water and residual raw material from the slaughtering process on board in process boats. This system will be specially adapted to process boats in the first instance. In addition to this, we also wish to investigate the nutritional potential of the separated blood in animal feed.