Analysis of Solar Heating System for an Aquaponics Food Production System

Abstract

Aquaponics is a sustainable farming technology that combines aquaculture and hydroponics, growing fish and plants together in a symbiotic environment. Aquaponics sets an excellent example for an efficient multidisciplinary solution to the real world problems such as drought, polluted environment and food contamination. In this paper we present an aquaponics system heated by solar thermal energy in order to maintain the fish living environment at 21 C. The paper presents an f-chart based analysis demonstrating the feasibility of the system. The results show for a collector area of 22 m2 that an annual solar fraction of 94% is needed to support an 833 liter aquaponics system.