Project Scale:
100 tonne annual production of Red Nile Tilapia

Where:
Beit Shean Valley, Israel

When:
The project was designed, packaged, and shipped in 2000 for on-site assembly.

Project Description:
Afikey Mayim selected PR Aqua to design and provide systems and equipment for a new Tilapia facility, with an annual production of 100 tonne, to be located at their site in the Beit Shean Valley of Israel. Motivated by the extreme shortage of water, the facility was to make extensive use of recirculation technology to minimize water use.

Services Provided:
PR Aqua provided the design and supply of all culture systems and equipment. All components, including equipment, plumbing, fasteners, and much more, was manufactured or purchased and pre-assembled at our factory in Nanaimo. Once the fit and completeness of the system was confirmed, the equipment was disassembled, containerized and shipped to Israel for assembly on site.

Project Features:
Due to the extreme shortage of clean, fresh water within this region of Israel, all systems were designed to as intensive Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) exchanging less than 5% of system volume per day.
Both fingerling and grow-out production systems were provided, each designed as a series of small modules each with independent water treatment. For culture tanks, a combination of small poly tanks and larger, glass-lined steel tanks, which could be flat packed, were used in the design. Filtration systems consisted of a combination of tank side and centralized treatment processes for solids removal, biofiltration, gas balancing and oxygenation. Low head microbead biofilters were used to reduce power requirements, and to meet with the specific water quality requirements of Tilapia.

Challenges and Solutions:
The main challenge on this project was to design the systems using small, modular components to facilitate shipping by container and easy on-site assembly. PR Aqua used three dimensional modeling of the systems to ensure that all components would fit into the shipping container, and would fit together on site as a working system.

Results:
The project and the assembled facility were both a great success. The Beit Shean Valley facility has become the model around which many other facilities are being planned and constructed in Israel. With this project, PR Aqua demonstrated its ability to deliver projects internationally with the same high level of quality and attention to detail that is evident on their domestic projects.