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When it first came out in 2013, the project claimed to use a floating “dustpan” to carry the ocean’s plastic garbage back to shore .
A few years have passed, and there is no credibility in this project, which makes everyone wonder whether it is in trouble or a scam?
Not only ordinary people think so, but even the experts who have long been engaged in marine litter research have scorned this plan. Francois Galgani, a marine litter expert at the French Marine Development Institute’s (IFREMER) , said at a EU marine litter discussion: “Cleaning marine litter is Nonsense. “Kim Martini, a marine physicist at the University of Washington, also poured cold water during the project concept phase:” They don’t have any field tests that can prove to be effective. “
Boyan Slat
Actually, the founder of this project, born in 1994, the 26-year-old Dutch little boy, Boyan Slat, has never stopped acting. It’s just that the reality is more skinny, so he and the team planted a big head in the early days.
It starts when Slat was a 16-year-old wife. In 2011, 16-year-old Slat discovered that there were more plastics than fish when diving in Greece. This experience prompted him to do a subject project to remove marine plastic pollution in high school.
Everyone understands that the average child wo n’t go after they get the score. But Slat did not. He followed this idea and went deeper, and gave a TEDx lecture in 2012.
TED has so many new technology and new project lectures every year, how many are finally made? How many projects end up failing or prove to be infeasible. According to the general idea, Slat can cash out after earning a good reputation, but Slat is not.
In 2013, In order to continue this project, Slat simply interrupted his studies in aeronautical engineering at the well-known university Delft University of Technology, and set up the non-profit organization The Ocean Cleanup, ready to concentrate Clean up trash for the ocean.
Slat, who has a background in science and technology, firmly believes that the ultimate technology for removing marine plastic waste is technology. In 2017In an article written by The Economist, Slat states: “Technology is the most powerful agent of change … Technological innovation gives us more ways to solve problems.”
Supported by this belief, Slat recruited a vote of like-minded scientists and engineers. Their first step was to conduct a scientific study to study the extent to which the ocean was contaminated with plastic. In this regard, they have done what no scientist can do— (the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) ) conducted the largest study in history .
The Pacific Garbage Belt is located between Hawaii and California. As a result of ocean currents, plastic garbage has gathered together. Before Slat’s team did research, it wasn’t clear how big the floating garbage mountain was.
Scientists have been studying the Pacific Garbage Belt since the 1970s. They usually use a sampling net to collect garbage, and then count the amount of wild garbage captured.
However, this method is only suitable for collecting small garbage, and cannot estimate large pieces of garbage. So in the summer of 2015, Ocean Cleanup launched the Mega Expedition scientific research project, using 30 ships and larger nets to sample at the same time. A total of 1.2 million pieces of plastic of different sizes were collected this time.
To calculate the size of the Pacific Garbage Belt, they also conducted the world ’s first aerial survey of the area with military aircraft.
Through this study, we learned that The Pacific Garbage Belt has grown to 1.6 million square kilometers of fat. How big is 1.6 million square kilometers? Larger than three Sichuan provinces.
The plastic waste in it weighs 80,000 tons, which is 4-16 times that previously estimated by scientists. Even more frightening is that 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic garbage are drifting in the Pacific garbage belt. These plastics will eventually be broken down into smaller microplastics under the action of sunlight and waves, and then step by step through the food chain to human tables.
Through these unprecedented studies, the marine cleanup team knows the scope of the project. So they started designing trash-making equipment. The basic idea is to design a floating coastline.
We’ve seen it before, beaches are often full of waves andThe density of all kinds of rubbish brought by the tide. The density of plastic rubbish on the beach is 2000 kilograms per square kilometer, far more than the density of floating garbage in the ocean. This is an example of shoreline garbage collection.
The same is true of artificial coasts. It is also because of the design of this artificial coastline that Slat also won the Best Technology Design Award from Delft University of Technology (before dropping out of business) .
Let’s take a look at the design of Slat. This marine plastic recycling device is 600 meters long. When it works, it will naturally dent into a C shape, holding trash like a dustpan.
The device also has a 3 meter deep bib, which can also surround the plastic below the sea surface, because there is a lot of garbage floating 3 meters deep below the sea surface.
This design does not block marine life, they can slip away from under the bib.
The device is equipped with solar energy equipment, coupled with ocean currents, waves and wind, the recycling device can float in the same direction as the plastic garbage island and overtake them at a faster speed.
You may find it strange that recycling devices drift with plastic waste, so how do you focus them?
Actually, Plastic waste is only affected by ocean currents, but the recycling device is also driven by the waves and wind at the same time, so the speed is faster than plastic waste, and it can be taken out.
The recycling device has a camera, sensor and signal transmitter, which can send signals to the satellite to notify the staff to collect garbage.
Every few weeks, workers will collect the garbage near the recycling device.
In September 2018, they implemented their first cleanup program in San Francisco with the first design System 001. Unfortunately, the No. 1 device broke because it was too fast, and no plastic was recycled. After that, Slat and the scientists in the team set out to improve the design, adding an anchor similar to a parachute-
The purpose of this anchor is to slow down the equipment and prevent it from breaking due to excessive speed.
In June 2019, the new system System 001 / B entered the sea near Vancouver, Canada. In October of 19, Slat’s friends finally picked up the first plastic waste from the Pacific Garbage Belt. This is the first time that humans have collected garbage from the Pacific Garbage Belt.
In an interview with American technology media CNET, Slat said that at the end of 2019, they collected 60 cubic meters of garbage and cleared the ocean area equivalent to 14,000 football fields; and all the garbage in the ocean Compared to this number is insignificant, but it proves that this ocean cleaning project is feasible.
In Slat’s own words: “We have now set up a self-sufficient recycling system on the Pacific Garbage Belt, which uses ocean energy to capture and concentrate waste. This gives us enough confidence to let This project continues. “
You can find the garbage collected. There are common daily plastic packaging, car tires, fishing nets, and countless microplastics.
Because of his success at sea, he is now planning to extend the project to inland rivers and lakes. Because most of the garbage in the ocean comes from the rivers that enter the sea. More importantly, only 1% of marine debris floats on the surface of the sea, and most of it sinks on the ocean floor. Only by blocking the garbage from the source can the management of marine debris be done more efficiently.
To this end, they also designed a device that uses artificial intelligence to monitor and calculate the flow of plastic garbage floating in rivers. Slat’s team took measurements around the world and created a map of global river plastic waste throughput. Through research, they found that 1,000 rivers in the world, that is, 1% of the rivers contribute 80% of marine plastic waste .
Rivers (red circles) that contribute 80% of marine debris
Image Source: theoceancleanup.com/sources
What equipment will be used to clear the river into the sea?
In October 2019, Slat’s Ocean Cleanup launched the fully-intercepted Interceptor, a fully solar-powered river plastic garbage-trap barge. It looks like this-
This barge can be fixed on the river bed, trapping plastic waste by river movement. Its shape is similar to the hull of a catamaran, its center of gravity is relatively low, and it is not afraid of large waves.
Look, all the plastic yellow ducks in the Interceptor conference demonstration were captured by the monster machine—
It can collect 50,000 kilograms of river litter every day, which is equivalent to 1 million soda bottles.
The garbage collected is automatically placed in these bins.
If all the bins are full, it will automatically send a distress signal to the local staff: “please let me be empty and lonely and cold” ——
These technologies sound very good, but the problem is that rivers with a lot of garbage are also important traffic routes.
Slat’s team has a solution for this. They have experimented with plastic bottles with GPS chips. I found that many rivers pass through a few narrow passages. As long as the Interceptor is stationed in this key position, it can not only stop the garbage but also block the road. .
Interceptor 2 in Malaysia
Interceptor has an expected life of 20 years. Currently, Ocean Cleanup has deployed the first Interceptor in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Workers install Interceptor 1 on the river in Jakarta
No. 2 is currently in Malaysia.
Interceptor No. 2 deployed on site in Malaysia
Working Interceptor No. 2
No. 3 will be deployed in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, and No. 4 will collect garbage on the Osama River in the Dominican Republic. Interceptor’s ultimate goal is to collect garbage on all 1000 of the most polluted rivers in the world within 5 years.
Yes, July 2018The Sama River is like this-
Interceptor is definitely the gospel of obsessive-compulsive disorder when working-
Interceptor 1 Jakarta filtered river surface
This young brother who is not only daring to think, has action but also creativity can be called Steve Jobs in the environmental protection field. For his contribution to environmental protection, the United Nations Environment Programme awarded him the Earth Championship in November 2014. (the Champions of the Earth award) Honor.
Since its establishment, Ocean Cleanup has also received donations from many companies in Silicon Valley, amounting to US $ 31.5 million.
However, the cost of ocean cleanup projects is huge.
Slat said that because they are operating in international waters, it is difficult for them to obtain any government support, and the biggest cost in the project is to use plastic ships to recycle plastic. To keep the project running, they are preparing to turn recycled plastic waste into commodities, such as small school bags and sunglasses. The first batch of recycled goods is expected to be available in September this year, and sales profits will be used to maintain the operation of the marine cleanup plan.
Of course, This is definitely not a profitable commercial project, because the ultimate goal of the ocean cleanup plan is to make the plan eventually go bankrupt because there is no garbage to collect .
I sincerely hope that my brother’s resume will look like this many years later:
Education background: University dropout
Working experience: picking up trash
Project achievements: failure
The article is from the public account: Bring Science Home (ID: steamforkids) , author: seven monarch.