Due to global populations continuing to grow at an unsustainable rate, methods of providing sufficient, nutritious food and clean water must be developed, while reducing the negative environmental impacts of agricultural production systems. Aquaculture, with its high feed conversion efficiency, has great potential to meet growing global demand for animal protein. However, aquaculture systems also produce large amounts of nutrient pollutants that can degrade environmental quality. Aquaponics is a growing and viable solution to environmental shortcomings set forth by traditional aquaculture systems as it utilizes waste water from fish production in the production of traditional agricultural crops. There has been a significant increase in excitement about aquaponics within the sustainable agriculture community . As commercialization of aquaponics continues to expand, rigorous quantification of sustainability using field measurements and life cycle assessment is increasingly important.
Auburn University is home to one of the nation's largest pilot scale aquaponics facilities. This facility produces tilapia that are currently sold to local markets while the aquaculture waste water is being used to produce tomato and cucumber crops that are sold to Auburn University dining services. While it is generally assumed that aquaponics is a sustainable approach to food production, we aim to quantitatively measure the system's environmental impacts utilizing a combination of field data, process modeling, and life cycle assessment. Our efforts will provide critical information about where and how environmental impact arise and provide insight into technologies and management practices that can further improve the sustainability of aquaponics.
Here we present our initial findings of the the mass balanced process model created in the SuperPro designer software which is being used to aid the ongoing life cycle assesment.