Design and Testing of Aquaculture Feed Conveyors

Aiming at the problems of high labor intensity and low efficiency in the water-based feeding operation of sticky feed for traditional cage aquaculture, this paper develops an automatic conveying equipment for sticky feed suitable for continuous operation in aquatic environments. According to the practical requirements of cage culture, the working principle of the equipment is as follows: firstly, the crushed sticky feed is sucked through the feeding port into the closed pipeline based on the interactive negative pressure suction principle; secondly, hydraulic control technology is adopted to drive the hydraulic circuit to generate high pressure inside the pipeline, extruding the sticky feed to the equipment discharge port and further conveying it to the feeding points of each cage; thirdly, partial parameters of the power oil pump, hydraulic cylinder and hydraulic pipeline are determined in accordance with the operation demands; finally, all parts are processed and manufactured based on the design scheme, followed by overall assembly to form a prototype machine. The prototype was tested at an actual cage aquaculture site. The test results show that the equipment can stably convey sticky feed over a distance of 102 m with a conveying capacity of 5.3 m³/h, which meets the practical aquaculture requirements. The equipment does not require an external power supply, and the threshold of power equipment can be adjusted according to different breeding demands. The development of this conveying equipment possesses practical application reference value for feed transportation in aquatic aquaculture, especially marine cage culture.