showcases
Have a look at some of the projects we developed.
Aqua4c, Omegabaarskwekerij
Aqua4C started building the most sustainable fish farm in the world end of 2014.
The Omegabaars farm produces 200 tons of fish per year and has a unique link with next door Tomato farm for the exchange of energy and water.
See more about the farm on www.omegabaars.be
Being aware of the world wide needs to stop overfishing on see, overconsumption of meat and the problems with highly polluting fish industries, developing this modern fish farm has been a great adventure.
We are 110% convinced that Aqua4c is a first big step in producing healthy, delicious and sustainable fish, without fish flour or oil, without waste water and without any negative effect on the environment.
As Project manager, Valentijn Schepens (VASCH) realised a big part of the engineering, focusing on the automation and electro-mechanical part, but also on development of specific aquaculture elements.
Until August 2019, as Operations manager, he made sure all hyper modern operations – such as PLC, pump and filter systems, monitoring devices, software and automated production machines – ran smoothly.
During the first fase of farming the ‘Omegabaars’, there was a continuously focus on process improvement and development, among which some unique aquaculture systems for purging and heat exchange.
WIWAM, Phenotyping robots
For our client SMO (prototype developer), we developed special machines for plant phenotyping research.
You can read more about these machines on the WIWAM site.
The different kinds of robots are used scientific research by means of for photography (IR, Hyperspectral, Fluorescence, RGB) of batches of plants, as well as for controlled weighing and watering.
As projects manager, Valentijn Schepens was head of the development of these unique machines.
In close relationship with the customers, all aspects of the devices where engineered and developed by the SMO team.
Among these elements are mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, PLC and special developed systems, as well as the link to computer guided monitorring and data collection.
Colruyt Land Based Aquaculture
Colruyt Group is a Belgian family business that has grown over three generations into a retail group with nearly 33,000 employees, active in three countries. And yet the group still has the assets of a family business, such as passion, expertise, simplicity and efficiency. They want to grow sustainably, with respect for health, society, animal welfare and the environment.
Within the Colruyt group, R&D divisions are contantly focussing on the development of sustainable solutions to reach their goals, such as zero emission for transport, 100% recycling of water and much more. (check the Colruyt Initiatives page for more info),
In the field of food production, Colruyt is developing some unique food production systems, such as vertical farms and a brand new sea farm for the production of Belgian mussels.
Vasch provides consultancy in development of innovative land-based aquaculture systems & feasibility studies.
One of the projects (2021-2023) was the complete development of a land based fish farm for a specific fish, including the design, development and testing of out-of-the-box aquaculture technologies for high output per m², the recycling and reuse of residual products (water, fertiliser, CO2, nitrate, etc..) and improvement of energy efficiency on all levels.
QO hotel aquaponics system
On the roof of the most sustainable hotel in Amsterdam, you can find a unique food growing system.
The greenhouse combines hydroculture with aquaponics.
Read more about QO and the food growing system here.
As Aquaponics consultants, we helped to develop the aquaponics system to be used with Omegabaars.
The unique setting in combination with existing standard hydroculture systems, had its own challenges.
Vasch worked in close cooperation with the hotel staff, local city farmer and greenhouse developing teams (Havecom, pb-tec, etc). to develop this unique system.
