Dynamic Fish Manure Extractor System

Cleanliness in fish hatchery raceways is of the utmost importance when it comes to healthy fish. As an engineering team, our purpose is to design a system that can effectively reduce the build-up of fish manure on the bottom of the raceways without causing re-suspension of the manure in the water.

Background
Current techniques used to clean fish hatchery raceways take an unnecessary amount of time. Minimum wage workers spend hours upon hours cleaning fish manure out of the raceways, but are ineffective in doing so due to problems with re-suspension of fecal particles. Therefore, the lack of an efficient way to collect fish feces causes hazardous living conditions for the fish in the raceways as well as for the ecosystem where the hatchery discharges its water: the Snake River.

Current Method Used in Industry

 * A screen that is pushed across the bottom of the raceways to collect manure (see photo)
 * A vacuum that cleans waste in the quiescent zone (see photo)
 * Quiescent Zone: area of the raceway designed to help the re-suspended particles have time to settle in the settling basins.
 * Last 20 feet of the raceway
 * No fish in this area
 * Settling basins emptied by hand

Design Specifications and Client Needs
Our client requests a design that will accomplish the following needs:
 * Remove feces from the bottom of raceways without re-suspension of particles
 * Be durable (minimal maintenance)
 * Be easy to use (anyone can operate)
 * Be cost effective (less than our budget of $750)
 * Be simple (be replicable)
 * Cause a net decrease in labor
 * Is automated and more efficient than the current method
 * Increases overall productivity and health of the fish
 * Increase dissolved oxygen levels
 * Lowers phosphorous levels

Future Work
The next step is to build a larger scale model to be tested in the Coldwater Lab on campus. This will give a more similar environment to obtain data for analysis.
 * Simulate actual raceway conditions and dimensions
 * More accurate velocity and discharge measurements can be taken to improve pump selection
 * More applicable materials can be used like bigger pumps, flexible hosing, and industrial reels

Another step is to implement full automation. Possible ways to accomplish this would be to design:
 * Electric motor to rotate reel
 * Gear ratio
 * Use overflowing water to rotate reel

Document Archive







 * Note: Design Review Presentations and Technical Presentation were too large to upload, however, all of the information from those presentations are on this webpage.