namibia

Namibia – climate smart solutions to enhance food security

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Climate change and the increase in the phenomena of droughts require drastic measures in terms of innovative agriculture approaches to maintain food securities in countries with water stress. Wageningen University (i.e. the author of this post, and Prof. Karel Keesman) wrote this strategic report that addresses the necessity and potential of the implementation of multi-loop aquaponic systems in Namibia. We are still looking for commercial farmers who want to join us on our journey into the future of agriculture. Read more

Decoupled Aquaponics – The Future of Food Growing?

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There is lots of discussion going on on the internet and within academic worlds, whether decoupled aquaponics has a general advantage over conventional recirculating aquaponic systems. Figuring this out was our objective in the last years and led to the publication “Navigating towards Decoupled Aquaponic Systems: A System Dynamics Design Approach“. Following the KISS principle, I will briefly outline the main points of the publication and discuss them a bit in non-academic jargon (excluding the paper’s abstract). Read more

process control

The need for Process Control in next-generation Aquaponic Systems

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In chemical engineering, processes are procedures encompassing mechanical, chemical, physical, electrical and biological steps to create a product from one or more substances. Decades of research and development have led to detailed knowledge of processes that shape our world today: from sawing off a piece of metal, to creating carbon nanotubes, everything that is industrially produced today comes from sets of very specific and controlled steps (i.e. process control (PC)).

Aquaponics -being an emerging field that deals with live organisms that can often be poorly understood-, can benefit from systematic engineering approaches found in process and chemical engineering disciplines. These approaches generally entitle breaking out a large process (a full aquaponic system in this case) into smaller sub-processes that can be studied both in isolation and in interaction with others. Read more

aquaponics logbook

Aquaponics Logbook

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We are currently running an experiment on specific nutrient uptake of lettuce grown in hydroponic, and both one and two loop aquaponic nutrient solutions. To guarantee that all relevant data is available after the experiment, proper data logging is an often underestimated factor. The excel logging file can be used and adapted by everyone for personal usage. You can find the aquaponics logbook in our new section “Tools”. The tool can log pH, light, air temperature, air humidity, water temperature, volume, EC, N-NO3, N-NO2, TAN, P-PO4, K, S-SO4, Ca, Mg, Cl, Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn, B, Mo and converts ppm (mg/L) to mmol/L automatically.  It also allows you to log how much acid/bicarbonates you added to your system for pH adjustment purposes.

COST Meeting Gran Canaria

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All four Developonics members attended the Aquaponic Hub‘s 3rd Management Committee meeting in Gran Canaria that was held from 22nd to 24th of April 2015. The meeting can be considered very productive; especially as several agreements have been made to press ahead with respect to jointly publishing papers in the field of aquaponics. All of us are currently involved in preparing at least one manuscript on European basis. We are looking forward to sharing the results on this site.

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