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Pessanha, Luís Miguel de Sousa Pereira Colaço
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- Homegreens - Aquaponics System as an Educational Tool towards a Sustainable FuturePublication . Carreira, Rute; Diz, Francisco; Pessanha, Luis; Bernardino, Raul; Franco, Inês M.; Mota, Alexandra; Faustino, Emanuel; Silva, Orlando R.; Ferreira, Susana M. F.Aquaponics is an integrated production practice that emerges from the combi-nation of two farming techniques: hydroponics and aquaculture. It consists in a simulation of a natural ecosystem that grows plants without soil substrate in the nutrient enriched waters recirculated from aquaculture systems. This type of production offers several advantages, namely economic and ecological ones. Homegreens is a project that aims to create small saltwater and freshwater aquaponic sys-tems, which can be installed in schools and serve as a didactic tool for introducing contents such as biology and sustainability to a juvenile audience. Implemented by a designers, biol-ogists and agronomists’ multidisciplinary team, the methodology was based on the develop-ment and quantitative validation of prototypes, and the installation and qualitative analyses of user’s interaction. These small scale aquaponic systems consists on a grow bed, an aquarium with a capacity for 45L, a protection barrier for the plant’s roots, aeration, biofilters and a thermostat. Sever-al simplified models were developed, presented and installed in two primary schools. Labor-atory tests were conducted to validate the use of a cork grow bed and a 3D printed polya-cid lactic (PLA) aeration and biofilter system. Children’s engagement and interaction with these simplified models, indicates that these systems will provide a biology and sustainability related group learning opportunity.