Blue Ships

What are Blue ships?

It is an autonomous, reliable, effective and self-sustaining system that provides an innovative solution in ocean garbage collection. It consists of an artificial intelligence that receives satellite and unmanned vehicle data, to reduce the amount of rubbish in the oceans by collecting them.

Given the large amount of waste in the oceans, the harmful effects this produces in both marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the ineffectiveness in solving this problem, a feasible solution is proposed in the collection of waste, and as a result, it will improve the environmental conditions of the planet.

Blue Ships consists of different stages, which are:

• Preparation stage.
• Garbage collection stage.

The system will have an artificial intelligence called "TASK".

Stages:

1. Preparation

For our proposal to be completely renewable, we must start with the energy collection. This will be accomplished with solar panels, because coastal areas have a high amount of solar radiation. To implement this, photocells can be located in the maritime area near the coast, where the battery banks will be located to store the solar energy, forming the loading center of the ship. For this purpose, the project will be based on a prototype of the company Kongsberg, the Yara Birkeland, that is expected to be launched in 2020, and which main features are denoted the implementation of an autonomous system by the implementation of GPS, radar, and sensors. Besides a load capacity, that fits our necessities and budget.

To acquire data about the location of garbage stains, the information will be obtained from the NASA satellite, APIs, data collection that will be conducted at the coastal port. The images and the path of the stain given by the sea currents will be processed with Google’s A.I., which will send a trajectory to follow by the ship. Once the data has been processed and having a defined route, the ship will depart until it reaches its destination.

2. Garbage collection

Once the garbage stain enters the range of the ship's sensors containing 30 drones, a section of drones will be deployed. Those drones will be in a mesh network that will follow the LoRaWAN protocol. This protocol allows: (a) data transmission at low speed with a long-range, (b) low power consumption, (c) a target mapping, performed by the swarm of drones through its cameras. Thus, the information will be sent by this same network as x-y coordinates, which will reach a data center to, thanks to an FPGA, be organized in a matrix "TASK" and be analyzed. TASK will determine its most optimal position and thus, assure that the energy loss is minimal. This data will also serve to determine the most efficient procedure that drones should perform to collect the garbage, each drone collects approximately 15-20 kg of garbage. Given the case the use of all drones is necessary, the total load would be 1.5 to 3 tons. Each drone's battery lasts approximately 20 to 30 minutes at its maximum load and maximum speed; once the drone detects its minimum battery level, it must return to its station to switch batteries using a mechanical spring system which connect and disconnect the batteries.

The waste will be stored in a store along with the ship which is designed to withstand a 10-ton load. Inside the store, it will be placed an all-metal balance made by the company “Balanzas Vega Systems”, which will have a maximum record of 20 tons, this as a precautionary mean since the ship will return to port when the sensor registers 10 tons. Then the drones will be kept in their storehouse. The ship would consume 0.25MWh and drones will consume 25Ah.

3. Costs:

Garbage price:

• 1 kilo of cardboard $0.044

• 1 kilo of glass $0.0087

• 1 kilo of plastic $0.087

• 1 kilo of scrap $0.1

• 1 kilo of copper $3.2

• 1 kilo of bronze $2.18^[1]

The price of plastic fluctuates due to the value of oil. This data is based on a marketing study, conducted by the group, in the main cities that collect recyclable material in Colombia.

The pacific large patch is an area full of garbage that is between 45-125 thousand tons. In money, this corresponds between 3 – 10 million dollars.^[2]

One of the benefits related to investment and profit is that little time is needed to recover what was spent on the ship, which is around 150 thousand dollars. Approximately, 65 days are needed, and the gain from recycling every 10 tons is 2300 dollars.

Each Vulcan UAV airlift drone with a load capacity of 30 kg used for this ship would worth $15000. Around 30 drones will be used and each drone will have 3 batteries. The drones will come with:

• 4 rotors
• A claw
• IP68
• Gyroscope
• Eco locator
• 1 camera

The boat will have an average value of $120000, to recover this investment will take 117 days of collection.

4.Future Impact

Finally, one of the great advantages of this idea is the fact that we could significantly reduce the rubbish stains of the oceans, because of, it is estimated that in one day, the ship will carry a total of 20 tons of garbage. Thus, considering the dimensions of the large patch of the pacific is estimated that it would take a ship between 16-46 years to finish cleaning this entire area, the process could be considerably accelerated with more ships and drones.

^[1]https://www.laopinion.com.co/economia/lo-que-es-basura-para-unos-es-negocio-para-otros-131344#OP

^[2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w#Sec15