Navigating towards Decoupled Aquaponic Systems: A System Dynamics Design Approach

The classical working principle of aquaponics is to provide nutrient-rich aquacultural water to a hydroponic plant culture unit, which in turn depurates the water that is returned to the aquaculture tanks. A known drawback is that a compromise away from optimal growing conditions for plants and fish...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Water (Basel) 2016, Vol.8 (7), p.303
Main Authors: Goddek, Simon, Espinal, Carlos, Delaide, Boris, Jijakli, Mohamed, Schmautz, Zala, Wuertz, Sven, Keesman, Karel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
agriculture
Agriculture & agronomie
Agriculture & agronomy
anaerobic digestion
aquacultural engineering
aquaponics
Biobased Chemistry and Technology
Life sciences
phosphate recycling
Sciences du vivant
sludge treatment
VLAG
WIMEK
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The classical working principle of aquaponics is to provide nutrient-rich aquacultural water to a hydroponic plant culture unit, which in turn depurates the water that is returned to the aquaculture tanks. A known drawback is that a compromise away from optimal growing conditions for plants and fish must be achieved to produce both crops and fish in the same environmental conditions. The objective of this study was to develop a theoretical concept of a decoupled aquaponic system (DAPS), and predict water, nutrient (N and P), fish, sludge, and plant levels. This has been approached by developing a dynamic aquaponic system model, using inputs from data found in literature covering the fields of aquaculture, hydroponics, and sludge treatment. The outputs from the model showed the dependency of aquacultural water quality on the hydroponic evapotranspiration rate. This result can be explained by the fact that DAPS is based on one-way flows. These one-way flows results in accumulations of remineralized nutrients in the hydroponic component ensuring optimal conditions for the plants. The study also suggests to size the cultivation area based on P availability in the hydroponic component as P is an exhaustible resource and has been identified one of the main limiting factors for plant growth.
ISSN:2073-4441
2073-4441
DOI:10.3390/w8070303