30 Seconds of Glory Video

Background

From NASA Earth Research we learned that there are high density areas of toxic micro plastics in the ocean, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This colossal mass of garbage contains 80% of all known plastics, 94% of which are micro-plastics. This problem has worsened by an additional 400 milllion tons in 50 years and there isn't an applied method today that is combating it; The Marine Cleanup Unit focuses on this problem.

Micro-plastics pose the most danger of all the waste in this area due to its microscopic size due to the bio accumulation of toxic chemicals. Research into eradicating microplastics is scarce and as a result there are no substantially successful projects that are dealing with this issue.

Methodology

It was recently discovered that a ferro-fluid, low density oil mixed with magnetite powder, attracts microplastics within water. The mixture can then be removed from the water via a simple magnet. We decided to take this approach on a larger scale to combat the shear scale of this problem.

By filtering the larger plastics from the water and focusing on our goal, we can pump large volumes of the ocean water and treat it all at once in an automatic process that gradually will collect the plastics into a measurable sum with which we can create a value for our effectiveness.

Problems We Encountered

- The required power to supply the unit needed to be from a sustainable source e.g. Solar Panels, which do not provide excessive amounts of energy.

- As the garbage patch is 1000km from the nearest coast, supplying the unit would be costly and therefore would need to be independent for a valid time frame.

- As the unit needs to hold vast volumes of material and be buoyant there was an issue with balancing weights.

Our Product

The Marine Cleanup Unit incorporates all of our issues into a single automatic, semi independent system that can clean 5-7km squared worth of microplastic filled ocean per month. It operates by extracting water through a filtration system into a mixing chamber, where it can be combined with the iron oxide. Once this occurs, an electromagnet is lowered into the chamber and activated. It is then lifted out of the chamber and a cart slides underneath it. The magnet is shut off and the contaminated iron oxide is dropped onto the cart and moved into a storage tank, where it can be picked up later.