LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT OF DECOUPLED SEMI-COMMERCIAL AQUAPONIC SYSTEM, INITIAL FINDINGS

Aquaponics systems have great potential to improve the sustainability of food production systems by leveraging the waste of one production system (aquaculture) to feed another (hydroponics). While aquaponics is generally thought of as a "sustainable" approach to fish and vegetable production, the assumption that aquaponics systems are inherently sustainable has never been thoroughly tested. This effort will utilize the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to rigorously test the hypothesis that de-coupled aquaponics has lower environmental impacts than stand-alone recirculating aquaculture and conventional vegetable production .

Intensive data collection has been and continues to be conducted on the existing pilot aquaponic system at Auburn University.  This data coupled with a process model developed in SuperPro Designer and calibrated with field data has allowed us to conduct lifecycle analysis on the following impact categories: total primary energy, climate change, consumptive water use, land use, eutrophication potential, and oxygen depletion. Environmental impacts will be quantified and specific operations within the aquaponics system that contribute the most to environmental impacts will be identified. Isolating areas of weakness within the system will allow us to develop new approaches to further reduce environmental impacts and improve overall sustainability.