End work: industrial product design aquaponic

[Jeroen Van Dooren]

Hi,

I'm a Belgian student product design and because I'm in my graduation year, I have to work one year around an end work. My plan is to work around a greenhouse design for one year. The project has to be innovative and have to be worked out on a detail level. I came here to find people who have the interest to share ideas. Maybe an idea which you never had the time for to work out and one that would match for an end work for a whole year. Or people who can show me where to start with the topic aquaponic. I think I already saw a lot of nice projects on this forum. 

To finish, I have some renders from a simple greenhouse concept that I did some years ago:

https://issuu.com/jeroenvandooren/docs/presentatie_eindjury

Thanks and have a nice day!

An

[Jeroen Van Dooren]

I'm having the idea in my head to design a system that's floating on a pond or a lake. A low floating greenhouse with beds full of plants and with an integrated aquaponic system that pomps the water out of the lake to feed the plants. The heating or cooling from the greenhouse would work with a heat pump. So the energy to cool or to heat would comes out of the lake.

 

I was thinking about the topics: the potential of this project, industrial or home use, profitable in the Netherlands, energy out of the water. 

What do you think about the inspiration?

[Jeroen Van Dooren]

Hi,

I made my solution to start my design. It's going to be a schoolsystem for 15-16 years old kids. The idea is to give classes around the topic aquaponics in combination with biology, fysics, chemistry or environmental health. It should also run on a basic arduino technology to get an overview about temperature, light hours and waterflow. This all included in an digital app where practica, build up movies, learning package and aquaponics interrogations are bundled together.

hThe design should come as a building kit. So the shells have to fit in eachother to save space for transport. It's going to be a table-top model and the electronics and pump will be centralized.

Now I got some questions. I want to use the CHOP system with a sumptank. I want to control the pump with the arduino timer and stop it when the classes are busy. So the class so the class will not be disturbed when they give classes. Is it safe to stop the pump in any time? Is the sump tank going to flood? Because it sounds like communicating vessels, where the system keeps going when the power shut off.

 

Thank you!

[Jeroen Van Dooren]

Philips is also going to support my prototype by giving me the greenpower LED research modules (red and blue). So students will be able to control the light intensity and learn about spectrum. The research module is also compatible with PLC. Hopefully also with the arduino.