Design of solar-powered aeration system for shrimp ponds of farmers in Thailand

Abstract

In Thailand, shrimp farmers traditionally rely on the electricity supplied by government organization to perform air aeration in their shrimp ponds. This paper designs an affordable solar-powered aeration system for shrimp ponds, which promotes the productivity of Thai shrimp farmers. The aeration system consists of three parts: the control of maximum power point (MPP) tracking, the Z-source DC-DC converter, and battery charging. In the first part, the energy was controlled by algorithms like perturb and observe (P&O), incremental conductance (INC), fuzzy logic control (FLC) and genetic algorithm (GA). In the second part, a set of devices were designed to regulate the energy to be supplied to the inverter and aerator. In the third part, the battery was charged to support aerator operation at night. Comparative experiments show that the proposed aeration system improved the dissolved oxygen (DO) level in shrimp ponds by 7.48ppm on average from the level of the traditional method, and controlled the mean temperature in shrimp ponds at 30.33°C, which is favorable for shrimp growth. The research provides a satisfactory green aeration system for shrimp farmers in Thailand.