Integrated renewable energy solutions for aquaculture processing; ENERFISH

The European Union Framework Programme 7ENERFISH project (www.enerfish.eu) aims to demonstrate a new poly-generation application with renewable energy sources for the fishery industry in Vietnam. From the energy viewpoint, the fish processing plant can be made energy self-sufficient, when the fish waste oil is processed in a biodiesel processor and further converted to electricity and heat in a CHP unit. The ENERFISH advanced CO₂ based freezing/cooling system requires optimization and control system planning of special high-pressure equipments. The high-efficiency cooling system can be tuned to be up to 14 % more efficient than conventional systems. The economical optimization model shows that in the Vietnamese demonstration case the electricity production is, due to the low electricity tariff, uneconomical (except during electricity blackout), even if cogeneration heat can be utilized. This prompted a design of the plant (in this particular demontration case) whereby the necessary heat for the biodiesel process is taken from the waste heat produced by the compressors of the CO₂ cooling system. According to the calculations and assumptions presented in this article, the profitability of biodiesel production from fish cleaning wastes in Vietnam depends strongly on the market prices for fish waste and fish oil. Different business case scenarios are being described.