Design of a breeding cage for the Black Soldier Fly

Abstract

Breeding Black Soldier flies is a costly process. It prevents large scale production of insect protein. A protein which offers an sustainable alternative food source. Study to an existing breeding facility show a number of improvements possible to enable sustainable breed. Specifically the cleaning process require 19 minutes per cell. An assignment is formulated focused on reducing that cleaning time while in de context of a next gen breeding cage for large scale production of eggs. Partial solutions are generated on that cleaning process and large scale implementation. The resulting concepts are evaluated and one concept is chosen. A second iteration to three redesigns is done to offer alternative directions in future use. The main feature of that concept is tested with a scale model. The time reduction and handling of that feature is presented as feasible. The study does not show validity of breeding aspects. In conclusion, a next-gen breeding cage is presented where costs of egg production are drastically reduced.