Sustainable Fish Farming at Lake Victoria (VicInAqua)

Clean water is the basis for life: especially nutrition and agriculture. In order to protect the sensitive ecosystem at Lake Victoria in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and to secure the nutrition and health of the people living there, the Institute for Applied Research at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, in cooperation with other partners, has developed an efficient, flexible and robust system for wastewater treatment and reuse in fish farming and irrigation. Since October 2018, there has been a demonstration plant in the city of Kisumu in Kenya, which is also used for local capacity building through training and study visits.

The wastewater treatment unit uses a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) to reuse water and improve the quality of fish farming. In the RAS, fish fingerlings are raised which have a particularly high quality due to the constantly monitored water quality.

 

A new self-cleaning water filter consisting of a membrane bioreactor (MBR) enables combined treatment. These self-cleaning membrane materials contribute to an environmentally friendly long-term performance. An innovative, easy-to-use monitoring system allows the plant to be monitored via smartphone. The filtered wastewater flows back into the RAS and the surplus is also used for agricultural irrigation. The filtered excess sludge is used to produce biogas with further organic waste. Together with a photovoltaic system, the biogas provides a flexible, decentralised energy supply.

An academic student exchange programme enabled ten students from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to get to know the technologies at the scientific partners at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences and at the Institute for Membrane Technology at the University of Calabria in Italy.

As a project partner, Steinbeis Europa Zentrum supported the research work, the administrative and financial project management, the communication and dissemination activities as well as the exploitation of the research results.

Further information:

  • Funding: European Commission, Horizon 2020, Grant Nr. 689427
  • Funding amount: around 3 Mio. Euro
  • Countries involved: Denmark, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Malta, Tanzania, Uganda
  • Project duration: 06/2016- 05/2019

Contact us!

Dr. Sandrine Doretto
Contact us

Contact us!

Dr. Sandrine Doretto

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