Welcome! We are Senior Design team number 8 “Team MechE”, Guillermo Flores, Melena Cavazos, Vanessa Gamboa, and Samantha Zuniga. Our team is working on this project during the Spring of 2024. This project is a continuation of the PRAWNS project from the academic year of 2023.
The development of this kinetic system holds promise in addressing the broader challenge of population growth threatening food security through its potential impact on aquaculture efficiency and sustainability. As the global population continues to rise, the demand for protein-rich food sources, such as seafood, escalates significantly. Aqua-culturists in the RGV region need an effective mechanized solution for agitating water to gently mix artificial feed. Currently this is being done by the previous senior design team’s propeller system. The problem to solve is an efficient and flexible method to address the feeding behaviors of prawns. To address this challenge effectively, the plunger-like system will need to produce translational motion without posing harm to the developing prawns.
The team is tasked with creating a plunger-like system capable of gently moving water that agitates artificial feed to mimic the motion of live food. Our project will help aquaculture researchers in the Rio Grande Valley as they study aquatic animals and their environments. We hope that you enjoy this project as much as we did!
Both shrimp and prawns are often categorized by the public as the same species, however there are a few key factors that prove their differences. Prawns, scientifically known as Dendrobranchiate, reside in mostly freshwater spaces as opposed to shrimp (Caridea) which thrive in saltwater. These crustaceans can be significantly larger in size and have head appendages that form a funnel for gills to maintain oxygen levels at bay; this is an adaptation formed from living buried under sediment most of their lifespan.
The current landscape of the competition encompasses a range of commercial products, research concepts, and prototypes developed by previous senior design teams. While commercial products may serve similar functions or purposes, they do not perform identical tasks as to what our system will be engineered for.
Our main motivation to work on the Prawns project is the real economic impact that this project has on food security and on our community of the Rio Grande Valley. Additionally, traditional fishing methods are often incapable of meeting this increasing demand sustainably, leading to overfishing and depletion of natural fish stocks. Aquaculture emerges as a vital alternative to alleviate this pressure on wild fisheries and meet the rising protein needs of growing population. As illustrated in the figure provided, the stakeholder map enables the visualization of all potential users or stakeholders associated with the plunger-like system. Aqua-culturists and consumers of prawns were set as the primary users for the product the team is designing.