With its high economic impact, off-flavor in fish is still one of the most serious problems in the aquaculture
industry worldwide. Until now, the highly cost- and time-intensive, as well as capacity demanding
depuration procedure by moving the fish to clean and odor-free water for a certain time prior to harvest
is the only reliable way to counteract off-flavors in aquaculture. Alternative strategies and processes for
efficient off-flavor prevention are still lacking. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate the potential
of ultrasonic water treatment to decrease the concentration of the relevant off-flavor compounds
geosmin (GSM) and 2-methylisoborneol (2-MIB) in aquaculture water. Therefore, different water matrices,
varying in their organic and inorganic load and composition (tap water, RAS fresh water, RAS sea
water), were spiked with 2-MIB and GSM standard and subsamples of 250 mL were subsequently treated
for 15 min using a lab-scale ultrasound transducer at 850 kHz. For verification samples from commercial
RAS containing biogenic 2-MIB and GSM were treated equally. The effects of ultrasound frequency and
salinity on the removability of 2-MIB and GSM via ultrasonic treatment were investigated by comparing
the removal efficiency of high (850 kHz) vs. low (20 kHz) frequency ultrasound and by adding artificial
sea salt (10 ppt) to different freshwater samples prior to ultrasound treatment, respectively.
Results have demonstrated that ultrasonically induced cavitation significantly reduces the tested off-
flavor compounds GSM and 2-MIB in all tested water types, seemingly irrespective of the (in)organic
load. In general, the reduction of GSM was slightly higher compared to that of 2-MIB. Furthermore,
the reduction of tested off-flavor compounds was significantly enhanced at high frequency ultrasound
(850 kHz) compared to low-frequency ultrasound (20 kHz). The addition of artificial sea saltto fresh water
samples caused an additional improvement in removability of both off-flavor compounds.
Our results evidence high frequency ultrasound as a potentialtreatment process for significant removal
ofthe relevant off-flavor compounds 2-MIB and GSM from RAS process water. In particular,the seemingly
low dependency of the ultrasound-induced removal of GSM and 2-MIB on the organic and inorganic
process water load predestines ultrasonically induced cavitation as a potential strategy for off-flavor
prevention in RAS compared to alternative strategies such as advanced oxidation processes or adsorption
processes.