The Ocean Cleanup Array is another solar powered invention that may help sweep up some of the mess we’ve made on our planet.
Our oceans are awash with garbage – much of it plastic. It’s estimated a hundred thousand mammals and a million seabirds die each year through ingesting or becoming entangled it.
While plastic garbage can be found in all the Earth’s oceans, currents tend to carry it to specific areas where it becomes concentrated. These areas are known as gyres, which are giant ocean current vortices.
One of these gyres is home to what’s known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch; located roughly between 135°W to 155°W and 35°N and 42°N.
Cleaning it up will be a mammoth task – and that’s where the Ocean Cleanup Array may play a role.
We’ve covered a similar concept already in use in Baltimore; the Inner Harbor Water Wheel, but the Ocean Cleanup Array will be far larger.
It consists of an array of floating barriers that passively corrals and concentrates the garbage, a solar powered conveyor that dumps the garbage into a shredder and a large vessel to hold the shreds, ready for transport. The collection process is fully driven by sun, winds and currents.
A 40m long barrier test installation in the Atlantic proved that the general concept works. An extensive feasibility study also concluded the full scale version would be effective and could remove nearly half the plastic garbage from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The full-scale version will be massive; consisting of a single 100 km array with two arms of over 50 km each deployed in a V-shaped configuration. The platform will have a capacity of 10,000 m3 and 162 solar panels will provide the power for the conveyor.
As is often the case with such projects, there is no shortage of critics and funding was always going to be a challenge. However, thanks to crowdfunding, more than $1 million of the $2 million required for the next stage has already been raised.
Leading the initiative is its now 19 year old inventor, Boyan Slat, a Dutch teen who came up with the idea while still in secondary school. In 2012, The Ocean Cleanup Array was awarded Best Technical Design at the Delft University of Technology.
