A UNIQUE CONTINOUS CONCENTRATION AND SEPARATION SYSTEM FOR LARGE WATER VOLUME REFINING

One of the main challenges for the aquaculture industry is to concentrate and separate viruses, bacteria, microparasites, particles or microanimals from large production volumes. This is difficult when the production water is sea-water or very complex contaminated water. Typical filtration systems consist of a dead-end plate with more/less defined holes or passages in the range between 100 nanometres to several millimetres. The main challenge is related to specific species concentration, separation or sorting within large volumes. Normally the whole biomass is concentrated at one physical area without any form of intelligent separation or sorting. This greatly limits the application of filtration related to diagnosis, analyses and treatment of complex liquid.

The unique Continuous Concentration and Separation (CCS) technology presented in this abstract is to establish this unique separation and sorting in connection with the concentration. This technology should be able to improve the sensitivity and specificity of diagnosis and analyses significantly. In addition, the technology is able to remove, sort, separate all particles or cells within a small or large volume of complex liquid.

This first CCS unit were produced by using injection moulding. Using 9 Continuous Separation Unit (CSU) including 180 micrometres between the pillars, different kinds of liquid or water consisting of different kinds of micro-organisms have been tested. Different kinds of inlet and outlet pressure and regulation were used including different concentration of microorganisms.

The conclusion is that any microanimal including Salmon lice may be concentrated from large volumes of sea-water into very small volumes of homogenized concentrated lice. This will significantly increase the sensitivity of any sensor used on this small volume.