Sustainable aquaculture industry waste valorization through recycling

Aquaculture is currently the fastest growing food production sector globally, but it also has the potential to leave a significant environmental impact due to inadequate waste management practices within its production systems. To ensure a sustainable expansion of this industry, it is crucial to make efforts to minimize or mitigate these environmental effects, while creating circular economy. The SEA-CYCLE project aims to utilize waste and wastewater from the aquaculture industry by implementing circular economy principles in the management of aquaculture waste as part of the production processes. The primary objective of SEA-CYCLE is to develop knowledge that will help increase sustainable approaches in existing sludge and wastewater handling processes while minimizing pollution in the marine environment. The project proposes technologies to contribute to the circular approaches in the aquaculture sector while reducing the environmental pollution via sustainable wastewater treatment and resource recovery techniques. In addition, SEA-CYCLE will evaluate the economic viability of these technologies from a societal point of view, considering both the environmental costs and benefits involved.

Aquaculture is currently the fastest growing food production sector globally, but it also has the potential to leave a significant environmental impact due to inadequate waste management practices within its production systems. To ensure a sustainable expansion of this industry, it is crucial to make efforts to minimize or mitigate these environmental effects, while creating circular economy. The SEA-CYCLE project aims to utilize waste and wastewater from the aquaculture industry by implementing circular economy principles in the management of aquaculture waste as part of the production processes. The project proposes creating value chain for aquaculture waste resulting from aquaculture production. The project will i) investigate the valorization options of aquaculture sludge through anaerobic digestion and pyrolysis, ii) assess the ability of biochar produced from aquaculture sludge for N and P recovery and heavy metal removal from aquaculture wastewater, iii) assess the potential of aquaculture wastewater enriched biochar as biobased fertilizer. The environmental and economic impacts of the proposed technologies in the project will be assessed by life cycle analysis (LCA) and social cost-benefit analysis. In this project, we have assembled a strong interdisciplinary team of scientists with complementary expertise in the valorization of aquaculture waste including anaerobic digestion, production and utilization of biochar for environmental applications, LCA and cost-benefit analysis. The project primarily supports the achievement of the SDG 6, SDG 7, SDG 12, SDG 13 and SDG 14 by proposing technologies to contribute to the circular approaches in the aquaculture sector while reducing the environmental pollution via sustainable wastewater treatment and resource recovery techniques.