80,000 tonnes of plastic are floating around in the Pacific Ocean current vortex and killing off marine life.
what solutions can people throw at the problem ?
there is a Dutch organisation already testing floating booms to concentrate it but there needs to be solutions to extract it , transport it and process it.
It’s not a cheap issue to address , the reclaimed and recycled product is not going to produce a profit so it would need corporate sponsors or contributions from governments.
medium sized ships (~10,000 ton) could be fitted with conveyor feeders that drop down into the ocean at this location and use guide shutes to funnel debris towards the conveyor , raise it up to the ship , put it through a trommel screen or cyclone to remove water and then compact the plastics into bales for loading into a mother ship for transport to a shore based site for processing.
Getting it to shore is one thing , but with the multitudes of different plastics plus contaminants of steel fittings and molluscs , it’s not going to be a clean product to recycle.
is it possible that the same system used to recycle car tyres now with heating under a vacuum could also be used to economically convert plastics back into fuel oils ?
It’s tempting to say “just spray the bales with shotcrete and drop them in the ocean when dry” but while being cheap that doesn’t remove the chemical pollutants ...
the ship propulsion units would need to be designed to avoid fouling with plastic debris for a start , filtered water intakes and water jets would feature high on the list when working in the debris field.
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