BUHLER

Innovative Climate Control Strategies in Insect Production:

Driving Yield and Cost Efficiency.

Internalization of all activity costs is an important aspect that makes the insect industry more sustainable compared to conventional feed protein production. While internalization can present challenges when competing on price with subsidized traditional feed protein sources like soybean meal and fishmeal, the production of insect protein still offers significant potential for cost reduction and operational optimization.

The insect growth phase remains one of the main cost drivers in insect protein. Efficient climate control during this stage is a powerful lever for improving both yield and economic performance.

Bühler aim to deliver cost-effective rearing solutions that enable customers to minimize the operational expenses (OPEX) of their insect production facilities. Energy costs typically account for 30–40% of BSF plant OPEX, making climate and energy management a top priority. Their integrated strategies for energy savings and yield maximization in the larvae growth section include:

• Evaporative Cooling: Utilizing evaporative cooling from the substrate during the latter stages of larvae development to reduce reliance on energy-intensive mechanical cooling.
• Adaptive Climate Control: Adjusting air flow, temperature, and humidity in real time according to varying external weather conditions to maintain optimal rearing environments while minimizing energy consumption.
• Energy Recovery Systems: Reusing heat generated in the insect growth process to lower energy consumption for conditioning incoming fresh air.

Leveraging evaporative cooling

In high-density insect rearing, climate control is a necessity to achieve enhanced larvae yield. Larvae grow best with a constant biomass temperature of 35–40 °C. To achieve this, Bühler’s climate control systems deliver warm, humid air during the initial phases of the rearing process and transition to cooler, drier air as the cycle continues.

To minimize energy consumption during cooling and dehumidification, Bühler harness the power of evaporative cooling, which is especially critical in the latter half of the growth process.

Smart climate adaptation

Evaporative cooling alone is not sufficient to control the growth conditions in all circumstances. Therefore, it needs further measures to not run into a large operational risk. With our climate control solutions, the temperature, humidity, and flow rate settings can be flexibly adjusted to deal with varying outside temperatures.

Already in the planning phase of an industrial plant, the ideal starting conditions can be calculated and validated with trials in our Insect Technology Centers located in Switzerland, Canada and China.

Thanks to integrated sensors and a smart automation system, these conditions can be fine-tuned during operation to find the most economical settings.

Energy recovery from exhaust air

Recirculating pre-conditioned air within rearing chambers can reduce energy consumption by up to 72%. However, recirculation leads to a higher concentrations of CO₂ and ammonia requiring sensors to monitor air quality and automatically adjust the recirculation rate to ensure optimal growth conditions.

Additionally, the exhaust air is captured and used to pre-heat incoming fresh air through heat exchangers, further reducing energy usage and operational costs. And that’s where internalization of costs is coming in handy.

It points out where the next opportunities lie to further reduce costs and emissions in the production of insect protein. This ultimately helps to render the insect industry even more sustainable – both in the ecological sense as well as from a business perspective.

Are you interested in further optimizing the energy efficiency of your insect plant? Or are you in the process of setting up a first production site and want to make sure that it runs efficiently and reliably?

For more information on BUHLER, please email contact their Business Development Manager Nicolas Braun (nicolas.braun@buhlergroup.com).

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