From Fish Farm to Fuel

The steep rise in fuel prices is creating opportunities for entrepreneurs to innovate and discover new low-cost feedstocks for biofuels production. Neptune Industries, a Florida company, is looking to collect waste generated byits fish farming operation to fertilize algae production for biodiesel feedstocks.

While in the minds of many Americans Florida is beaches, Disney World and Cape Canaveral, in reality it is one of the nation’s agricultural powerhouses. Biofuels pioneers are looking for ways to take advantage of the bounty of byproducts the state has to offer to feed the energy needs of its expanding population. This has led to the development of projects which would make fuel from citrus peels, sugarcane bagasse and livestock manure. A new project is taking another agricultural operation—fish farming—and using the byproducts to create feedstocks for biodiesel production.

Neptune Industries Inc. and its subsidiaries have come up with a way to solve a long-standing problem in aquaculture—how to keep the fish excreta and uneaten food from becoming a pollution problem, says company Chief Executive Officer Ernest Papadoyianis. The company’s invention, called the Aquasphere, keeps this waste out of the environment and collects it so it can be used for other purposes. One of those purposes is algae production for biodiesel feedstock.

Enter the Aquasphere

Neptune Industries, which was founded in 1998, is primarily a technology development company with an emphasis in aquaculture, Papadoyianis says. The company was started by Papadoyianis and his partner and Neptune’s chief operating officer Sal Cherch. They first investigated the feasibility of using Florida’s quarry lakes for aquaculture—fish farming. The lakes were formed in the pits where limestone and other minerals were mined.

“These lakes are an untapped resource,” Papadoyianis says. “Most are privately owned and once the mining companies dig down (as far as their permit allows) that’s it. After that, they can leave the lake open and pay the taxes on it as an industrial mine, or they can close the mining permit and mitigate the lake, which is expensive. Once you’re done it’s a liability you have to clean up.”

Raising fish in the lakes after mining has ceased allows the operation to be zoned as agricultural property and saves a significant amount of money in taxes, postpones mitigation and produces revenue.

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From Fish Farm to Fuel