Development of harvesting and up concentration technologies for microalgae as an ingredient in fish feed

The European Union has recently adopted an ambitious strategy for developing the Bio economy in Europebased on the innovative use of sustainable biological resources to cover the growing demand of the food,energy and industrial sectors. Despite their excellent nutritional quality of digestible protein, LC PUFAs andvitamin/ minerals, fish meal and fish oil are limited resources in aquaculture and alternatives are neededto support the fast growing aquaculture demand for high quality fish feed.Micro algae represent an interesting reliable resource of great potential as an alternative to fish meal andfish oil. In applications of algae in fish feed, it is essential to produce a product comparable to fish proteinand fish oil both in terms of quality and costs.Downstream processing of microalgae includes harvest, dewatering, cell rupture, fractionation and drying.The dewatering and drying which involve separation of water from the algal suspension, account for themajority of total production costs.This project investigate the effects of harvesting, dewatering, thermal treatments and drying on microalgaebiomass composition and quality and suggests a set up suited for the production of algae ingredients forfish feed. Further we evaluate the chemical composition of six different microalgae species including;Nanochloropsis limnethica, Chlorella sorokiniana, Phaeodactylum tinctorium, Dunaliella salina,Nannochloropsis salina and Nannochloropsis occulata .