This project aims to revolutionise the way we produce food in the UK. It will utilise an ancient, sustainable growing technique, Aquaponics, to produce both fresh fish and plants in a closed-loop, ecosystem approach to farming. The productive ecosystem will be enclosed in an innovative, low energy, state of the art greenhouse structure that provides a controlled environment in which to produce food all year round, in a temperate climate, whilst minimising the use of energy and water. The Aquaponics Solar Greenhouse (ASG) brings together a number of tried and tested technologies, all sustainable and groundbreaking in their own right, but when combined provide a truly viable turnkey solution to year round, sustainable food production.
The ASG has three key components:
- A highly productive closed-loop aquaponic system producing high quality, high value fresh fish (tilapia, catfish, perch and barramundi) and plant crops (salads, herbs and fruiting crops) year round with minimal resource inputs.
- An innovative building envelope, a passive solar greenhouse, which maximises use of solar energy through its ETFE film (as used at the Eden project) to capture surplus energy during the day which is stored in the thermal mass to be released passively at night.
- A renewable energy system: the greenhouse is designed first and foremost to be energy efficient and to meet energy needs passively wherever possible, however when integrated with waste heat and renewable energy in the form of biomass, anaerobic digestion and/or solar photovoltaics, production has the potential to becomes truly sustainable and even carbon negative.
The ASG has been developed, prototyped and validated on a small scale and we aim to use the Greenius award to rapidly scalee up to a working commercial product.