Energy consumption for salmon slaughtering processes.

Today’s slaughtering and processing method for Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) using large refrigerated seawater (RSW) and buffer tanks before and during a stepwise processing regime has now reached its limits. To overcome this problem, the salmon industry must, like the poultry industry, move towards automated online production, where the animal is quickly processed so all the energy (cooling and transport) can be focused on the meat only and not the surrounding water/ice and carcass. It is of importance to quantify the total energy consumption related to chilling and transport of Atlantic salmon. This enables to foresee and compare the energy requirements, costs and environmental impacts related to existing and new chilling technologies. A modern large slaughter facility in Norway that slaughter up to 125 000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon per year uses RSW tanks for fish cooling with a typical volume of 200-280 m3. This results in a significant amount of energy consumption for refrigeration. The objective of this paper was to describe the current situation at three different salmon slaughterhouses. The energy consumption were estimated and compared. In 2015, the specific energy consumption for these facilities were 105.7, 103.1 and 85.1 kWh/tonne, respectively. The refrigeration systems use ammonia as refrigerant, which is common in food processing industry in Norway.