Interview with John Bertil Askernes, Senior Development Engineer at Linde Innovation Center:
"The fish farming industry is changing to meet an increasing demand for food in the world. The challenge is not if the industry will grow, but more how much fish can we produce? And what is the most efficient and sustainable way to do it.
The Linde Innovation Center in Ålesund, Norway is Linde's R&D center for Aquaculture and Water Treatment. What makes the facilities in Ålesund unique is our capability to run all kinds of tests that are relevant for our customers.
One of our advantages working within Linde is that we can work with technology driven research, because we are not depending on selling the product right away. So, we are focusing our research and development on meeting our customers needs and demands in the future.
One of the strongest trends in the market is building large ingrowing farms on land. This means growing the fish longer on land before moving the fish to open sea plants. This is good for the fish, the environment, and the investors. This ingrowing on land gives the fish a better environment. It reduces feed and feces spoils and it’s more predictable and controllable. We are already supplying oxygen systems to the largest fish plants and we will continue to develop equipment to meet the customers’ needs in the future.
In Ålesund, we have important and valuable in-house competence. We have also developed several projecting tools to help us calculate and develop the best technical solutions for our customers. To oxygenate freshwater, we use pressure vessels, cones, to supersaturate the water.
For sea water and brackish water, we use micro bubble technology. This is where we expect to see the biggest potential in the future. The micro bubble technology is based on creating tiny bubbles of oxygen in the water. These bubbles have low buoyancy and therefore most of them stay in the water long enough to completely dissolve. Our micro bubble technology is very energy efficient. We use a little energy to make the micro bubbles, but we use almost no energy to dissolve the gas.
Looking forward I think that fish farming in general will play an important role for the world’s food production. Farming fish is far more feed efficient than producing pork of beef. if all the cattle were fish, we wouldn't have a shortage of food in the world.
Linde gas is important and reliable supplier for Norwegian fish farming. And if we manage to keep that position, I think we will grow together with our customer. And then we will have a bright future at the Innovation Center here in Ålesund.”