Tech giant sets its sights on aquaculture

By Gustav-Erik Blaalid

Welcome to Pentair. A multinational with lofty ambitions and a willingness to increasingly invest in the global salmon industry. Moving and purifying water are the company’s specialities, as the world’s largest suppliers of pumps and filtration systems for swimming pools and aquariums – small-scale systems they’ve now successfully managed to upscale for the aquaculture industry.

WATER Dennis DeLong developed the company’s research facility, Pentair Aquatic Eco-System’s World Aquaculture Technology, Engineering, and Research center (WATER). DeLong proudly showed me the test tanks and can`t wait for the fish to be stocked – warm water species on the one side and cold-water species (salmon and trout) on the other. “The most important aspect of this research station is that we are able to test new products, invent new technology and make the necessary adjustments before the products are shipped to market,” says DeLong. He adds that the facility will be a valuable arena for learning, something he greatly appreciates. “I have over 20 years of experience as an aquaculture specialist at North Carolina State University – working mostly with recycling systems and water purification,” he explains. At the research facility in Orlando pumps and purifiers – drum filters, biological filters and UV filters – are tested and developed. DeLong shows us four different facilities where biologists, chemists and electrical engineers will be given ample space to work. The experiment hall is fitted with a rail hanging from the ceiling where a feeder is attached. This is programmed to follow a fixed loop above all the fish tanks and deliver a pre-programmed amount of feed. The feeder is made by the Finnish company Arvotec, and DeLong is very pleased with it. He also praises the Norwegian supplier AquaOptima for helping to develop systems for removing particles from the tanks. “AquaOptima has investigated how the water flow in a tank moves, and how it can be controlled so that particles from feed and faeces are drained out from the midpoint of the bottom of the circular tank. The dirt is collected in separate containers and removed periodically. The final product can be used as fertilisers,” explains DeLong, who adds Pentair also operates within the field of aquaponics.

Recycling Pentair’s move into aquaculture has been very diverse – they've supplied equipment to companies engaged in farming tilapia and other warm water species, but they also get more and more customers who are producing salmon, which is why the company has sales representatives in Norway and Chile. A large and important part of the salmon industry is juvenile production and increasing numbers of plants are now built with recirculation systems, creating an opening for Pentair to supply pumps, valves and filtration systems. DeLong believes that the experience Pentair has from the “leisure segment” (swimming pools and aquariums), as well as “foodstuffs” (sludge), comes in handy in the context of aquaculture. “The core products are the same: pumps, valves and filtration systems. We are much better equipped to meet the challenges of new business areas when we master this core competence,” he reflects. Pentair provides cleaning and filtration systems for the food service industry as well as public wastewater treatments and public water supplies. It also helps industry manage and reuse wastewater.

Aquaponics In the United States, perhaps more than elsewhere, Aquaponics is proving a very popular trend and Pentair is keeping its finger on the pulse. At the Epcot Center in Orlando, the company had a small pavilion during the spring festival which contained a circuit in which one tank produces fish, the waste from which is then used to fertilize crops, then the water is recirculated. On top of a three-storey building in Orlando, Pentair has taken the idea a step further – producing fish in several tanks where water is circulated before fertilizing and watering crops growing on a bed above the tanks. The farm, known as Green Sky Growers, sends its produce to a restaurant on the ground floor, whose menu consists of vegetables, herbs, and occasionally fish, grown onsite – the concept is considered to have a great future. A growing world population and substantial changes in diet will increase global demand for food by 70 per cent by 2050, according to one on the company’s aquaponics leaflets. It is also expected that water resources will become more and more scarce in the future, a prediction that the aquaponics system has taken seriously. Indeed, as the technical director of the Orlando facility explains, when everything works as it`s supposed to, the need for water renewal will be only 2 per cent per day.