A method is presented for the selection of a conceptual design of an aquaculture facility using a systems approach whereby many alternatives for each facility component are generated and evaluated before selection and detailed design are carried out. Included are extensive literature reviews of design and operation of aquaculture facilities and mathematical modeling methodology for analysing the production of aquatic organisms.
The method is applied to the design of a facility to fit into an existing cattle ranch in the dry interior of British Columbia near Nicola Lake. The two operations (agriculture and aquaculture) are seen as mutually beneficial: the ranch can provide husbandry and technical manpower, shared machinery and equipment and loan collateral to the fish farm; and the fish farm can provide income diversification and waste nutrient rich water for irrigation to the ranch.
The chosen design was that of an intensive culture trout farm using gravity fed surface water from Moore Creek feeding into above ground plastic raceways (10,000 trout per raceway). The raceways are arranged down the natural slope of the land with serial recycling of the water, biological filtration after every third reuse and re-aeration before entering each raceway.
Gross economic analysis indicates that although some trout farm sizes would not be profitable, a very small operation (one or two raceways) would pay for itself and a moderately large operation (six to ten raceways) would produce a good return on investment.
Mathematical models for fish, invertebrate and algal growth and fish respiration were adapted to the design process by incorporating them into interactive computer programs in the BASIC language for the APPLE microcomputer. Calculation procedures for the design of solar and conventional heating and biological filtration of the process water, pipeline design selection, and capital and operations costing were developed as formatted matrices on a commercial spreadsheet program so that many options could be evaluated with ease. A tabular evaluation format was developed to quantitatively rank the suitability of various potential alternative design configurations for each component of the overall system to aid in alternative select ion.
The steps required to turn this conceptual design into a working pilot plant leading to a viable production facility are outlined, along with the areas of greatest uncertainty in the design.Land and Food Systems, Faculty ofGraduat
