Big Akwa

Big Akwa is a food-tech innovation start-up that economically and environmentally revolutionizes land-based aquaculture by introducing industrial symbiosis between the aquaculture and process industry.

Principle: Co-located fish farming system and the forest industry working together synergistically and sustainably. The pulp industry generates low temperature heat that is typically wasted in production. This heat can be used to warm up fish farm water to optimal temperatures ensuring faster fish growth and lower energy usage. Fish farms produce “dirty water” that tends to get released into surrounding waters causing serious environmental problems. However, this dirty water happens to be a favourite food source for the bacteria pulp producers use in the water purification steps. By recycling dirty fish water and feeding it back into pulp production, considerable energy savings may be realized while improving the environmental footprint of both fish and pulp production.

To realize the enormous potential of combining aquaculture and pulp production, Big Akwa develops an efficient approach to the fish farming, based on industrial symbioses between two industries. 

Big Akwa together with Pulp production

Potentials: The technology is scalable and can be paired to any pulp/paper mill, helping the local economy and providing a fresher sustainable product. Based on existing global pulp production capacity, 50 000 tons in Sweden (5 times the actual aquaculture production) and 1,2 M tons globally of sustainable fish can be farmed innovatively at a reduced cost to create more sustainable pulp and aquaculture business models.

The result is 20% more efficient fish farming without environmental impact and that the paper pulp factory does not need to purchase as much fertilizer for its bioremediation

Big Akwa together with Hydrogen/E-fuel production

Here you see an example of how Biga Akwa makes use of the waste oxygen and the waste heat left over from hydrogen production.
The waste oxygen is used in the fish farming and in the oxygenation of the bio-purification which cleans the gray water from the fish farming. The waste heat is used to maintain the right temperature in fish farming and bio-purification and to dry biosludge, biocoal etc. into salable and transportable products.

The result will be 20% more efficient fish farming and a number of interesting organic value added products to sell – As fertilizer, Single Cell Protein, animal feed etc.