Aquaculture
Aquaculture facilities rely on precise level and pressure instrumentation to maintain optimal water quality, temperature, and feeding conditions. Accurate process control ensures sustainable productivity while meeting growing global demand for protein sources.
Overview
Aquaculture encompasses the farming of fish, shellfish, and aquatic plants in controlled environments. Modern aquaculture facilities rely on precise process control to maintain optimal water quality, temperature, and feeding conditions. Accurate level and pressure instrumentation is critical for managing water treatment systems, feed storage, and processing operations. With growing global demand for sustainable protein sources, aquaculture operations must balance productivity with environmental responsibility, ensuring animal welfare while maintaining efficient resource utilization.
Industry Challenges
Key challenges we help address
Monitoring water quality parameters in remote offshore locations
Maintaining precise feeding schedules across multiple sites
Detecting equipment failures before fish stock is affected
Managing biosecurity and disease prevention across pens
Tracking feed consumption and conversion ratios accurately
Ensuring regulatory compliance for environmental discharge
Use Cases
Explore specific scenarios and challenges in this industry
Delousing systems
Aquaculture
One of the major challenges for fish farms around the world is lice infestation, which can force farmers to pull their fish out early. In addition to the use of cleaner fish, a thermo-mechanical treatment has proven successful. In this process, pressure is used to lift the lice off the fish before they can be removed by low-pressure flushing. Pressure sensors control the process and ensure that it runs safely and efficiently.
Evaporator
Aquaculture
Fish waste is one of the highest quality raw materials for the production of oils. These oils are, among other things, the source of omega-3 oil. The distillation-based production of the oil requires careful control in high temperatures and vacuum. In the oil vapour condensation process, reliable limit level detection must ensure the accurate switching on and off for the dependable operation of the pumps.
Feed line compressors
Aquaculture
When rearing fish larvae to the young adult stage in onshore systems, the optimal amount of oxygen in the water is a necessary criterion for growth. To reliably and cost-efficiently monitor the compressors required for this, the feed lines carrying the oxygen-enriched water must be monitored for correct pressure. This way, the system can detect a malfunction or a drop in pressure immediately. Reliable operation allows the young fish to grow up healthily and stress-free.
Feed pellet silo
Aquaculture
As well as the type of fish being farmed, it is the feed coefficient, the so-called "fish in – fish out" ratio, that determines the required quantity and appropriate composition of feed. To ensure on-time availability and optimal feed composition, reliable stock level monitoring is necessary. The feed stocks, from production to delivery and distribution, are visualised and reliably managed. Automatic ordering processes are triggered by VEGA Inventory System.
Feeding barges
Aquaculture
To feed the fish, automatic systems distribute feed pellets from the storage containers. In floating facilities, there are several storage containers located next to the "grow-out tanks" for this purpose. These are continuously monitored in order to reliably measure the amount of feed extracted. In this way, evenly distributed feed quantities can be ensured over the entire lifetime of the fish.
Filter system for coarse dirt
Aquaculture
In on-shore facilities, reliable filtration ensures the required water quality. This is achieved through the use of mechanical drum and disc filters. They form a multi-stage system, where automatic flushing via jet nozzles is controlled by the water level in the tank. Besides a high water quality, the fish also need the right amount of oxygen in the water. After the water has been cleaned, the correct amount of oxygen is added to it via compressors. Throughout the entire process, a guaranteed flow of water with sufficient oxygen enrichment is essential and therefore ensured by reliable differential pressure measurement and limit level detection.
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