Cooling designed for sustainable aquaculture

Keeping a fishing vessel running costs thousands of dollars a day. Every one of the company’s vessels needs to be filled to maximize productivity and efficiency. The company needed an efficient, cost-effective way to keep the fish they catch and fillet at sea fresh and cool. By law, vessels must store their catch in chilled water in the hold of their vessels until they reach land. But keeping such a large quantity of fish cool isn’t easy. In some cases, fishing vessels use a combination of fans and bags of ice to cool the fish manually; but using so much ice is far from sustainable and often very expensive. Most importantly, these manual cooling solutions are rarely efficient enough to keep vessels cool reliably and consistently. Without an efficient cooling system, the company would be forced to reduce the size of each catch significantly. They needed powerful, efficient cooling systems for its fishing vessels. So, they turned to us – their partner for nearly a decade – for support.

Aggreko stepped in with a complex installation of chillers, heat exchangers, and generators for each vessel, designed to keep the water at the perfect temperature for the duration of each trip. The holds of Cooke fishing vessels are vast, and the chilling requirements are complicated; different parts of the hold need to be maintained at different temperatures, meaning that cold water must be carefully directed to the right area. Knowing this, we brought Aggreko’s engineers on-site for an in‑depth assessment.They worked alongside crew members to understand the correct temperature for each area of the hold and decide on the best combination of equipment. Every generator, heat exchanger, and chiller needed to be positioned carefully to ensure that they were protected from waves of seawater washing over the vessel. We also agreed to allow the customer to weld the equipment to the deck, ensuring it would remain securely in place, even in choppy seas.

The heat exchangers, generators, and chillers are now securely installed on several of the company’s vessels across the region, helping to keep each catch at the perfect temperature. After the equipment was installed, our engineers carefully monitored the performance of the solutions to ensure each area of the hold was kept at optimum temperature. Now that they have a reliable way of keeping holds cool, the company can send vessels out for extended periods and catch a much greater quantity of fish without worrying about spoilage or wastage. It’s estimated that using this mechanical cooling solution allows the company to save huge quantities of ice – and, for each trip, saves the company between $3000 and $6000.