AQUADIG
Optimizing seafood trading and maintenance
The distribution of live seafood for human consumption requires tight quality control. Water quality parameters of live seafood distributors are commonly kept at the same conditions, regardless of the number of animals per tank, which demand heavy operational costs without need. Also, the only thing that is measured is water temperature, and even then, seldomly.
From the moment of catch or harvest, seafood needs to be controlled and kept alive for delivery to the consumer. Mortality during maintenance and transport is high, greatly reducing the product’s value.
AquaDig is a game-changer for live seafood distributers across Europe. It is a smart solution that implements a digital layer that monitors and optimizes equipment operations, provides food safety, as well as traceability reports resulting in reduced costs and lower mortality of the seafood.
By monitoring the key parameters of the installation, such as water temperature, water flow, oxygen, nitrates, pH levels, and the energy consumption of the separate equipment, we can better optimize the operational costs – target is 20% less electricity.
For additional traceability during transport, AquaDig equips a transport van to monitor temperature and oxygen until delivery to the client and wirelessly synchronize with our platform. This further brings innovative predictive maintenance capabilities lowering the risk of malfunction that would otherwise endanger the seafood in the water tanks.We aim to reduce by at least 10% mortality during maintenance and transportation.
Timeline
The concept was analysed by all three partners to design the optimal solution that would address the key pain points in the fisheries. For the first two months, our main focus was on the architecture and hardware necessary to achieve our Key Performance Indicators. We developed and implanted the solution at the pilot site (Madeira Island) and started testing it with the regional market. The project concluded in April 2020 with the pilot demonstrations.
Partners
Inova DE, Go Limpets and
Impact
The project allowed us to develop a targeted solution to a specific vertical in the agro-food industry: the fisheries. The traceability aspects inherent to IoT platforms were now leverage with optimization strategies that positively affect the bottom-line of the food trading companies. We managed with our experiments to demonstrate that we can save energy costs and reduce animal mortality with our approach.
This development was supported by the DIATOMIC project, EU grant agreement Nº 761809
