The Norwegian government's goal for the future is ambitious: becoming a leading seafood nation with 5 milliontonnes of sustainable aquaculture production by 2050. The salmon and rainbow trout biomass production of 2017was 1.3 mill ton with a corresponding sludge volume of 2.1 mill ton, while by 2050 the sludge volume is predicted toreach 11 mill ton. To make aquaculture more sustainable and ready for stricter emission requirements, sludgehandling solutions need to be increasingly adopted by the industry.SLAM-DUNK aims to develop a sustainable value chain for the conversion of fish sludge into valuable products. Assuch, the project will not only work on solutions for the sludge problem, but actually turn the aquaculture sludge intovalue. Novel treatment technologies (anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis, and microalgae) will be developed or optimized,and integrated to turn the sludge into potential materials for use in several sectors, such as architecture, consumergoods, and textiles. The consortium will not only focus on technology development, but also study the sustainabilityof the developed value chain, looking at the environmental impacts, the energy use, the costs, and the logistics ofhow such value chain should be organised.To do so, the consortium consists of a varied team of scientists and industry partners that cover all aspects from fishto product: NORCE is the project leader and will work on anaerobic digestion and microalgae cultivation, as well asthe sustainability analysis, with support from the University of Bergen and Wageningen University from theNetherlands. Feeder International and Marineholmen RASlab will provide sludge and knowledge about aquacultureand sludge collection. Prototech will develop the pyrolysis process. Finally, Bioregion Institute will work on materialdevelopment for architecture, consumer goods and textiles from the produced biomass.The project will run from 01.11.2021 to 31.12.2024.
