AQUAREL Project Partners learning how to produce fish oil!

Aquatic Resources for Green Energy Realization “AQUAREL” project (KA397) is at the finishing line. The project has developed an AQUAREL concept for the Republic of Karelia for utilizing fish waste and other aquatic biomaterial in green energy production or other economically profitable purposes.

The AQUAREL concept provides a sustainable end to end solution for utilizing fish processing side streams for fish oil production. 

• Fish oil can be utilized as such or by further processing it to bio-diesel, fish meal or animal fodder.

• The oil, water and solid phases are separated from the heated fish waste based on gravity. 

The end to end solution was piloted in the Republic of Karelia. The process piloted was a batch process, designed to manage 250 kg of side stream, mainly fish viscera, per batch. The fish side streams are first heated in a heating unit. The oil phase on top of the heating unit is removed after which the rest of the mass is pumped to the fish oil separation unit. In separation unit the fish waste is separated into two (2) phases by gravity; fish oil and solids including the water and oil.

The AQUAREL project partners from Oy Culmentor Ltd, Ecofoster Group Oy, Vilia Ltd and Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Science visited the pilot facility in Borovoi, Karelia to learn the fish oil production process in practice.

Jaakko Seppälä, Ecofoster Group, taking fish oil
samples from the heating unit.

 

Based on the pilot experience Jukka Hellgren from Oy Culmentor Ltd. concluded that even if the fish oil production process is not complicated, the operative management of small-scale production unit requires dedicated resources and separate facilities especially to meet hygiene requirements. 

More information about the project: www.culmentor.com/aquarel