19-year-old Develops Plan to Clean up Oceans
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Academic
Idea Consists of an Anchored Network of Floating Booms and Processing Platforms that Could be Dispatched to Garbage Patches Around the World
With millions of tons of garbage dumped into the oceans annually and repeat incidence of oil spills like theDeepwater HorizonDisaster, it's the Ocean which has taken the brunt of unsustainable methods from man. In effect, it's estimated almost 100,000 marine animals are killed due to debris entanglement and continually rising pollution.
Working with the flow of nature, his solution to the problematic shifting of trash is to have the array span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel as the ocean moves through it. The angle of the booms would force plastic in the direction of the platforms, where it would be separated from smaller forms, such as plankton, and be filtered and stored for recycling.
The issue of by-catches, killing life forms in the procedure of cleaning trash, can be virtually eliminated by using booms instead of nets and it will result in a larger areas covered. Because of trash's density compared to larger sea animals, the use of booms will allow creatures to swim under the booms unaffected, reducing wildlife death substantially.
Economically, the Ocean Array Project also rises to the top due to its sustainable construct; it's completely self-supportive, by receiving energy from the sun, currents, and waves. By also letting the platforms' wings sway like an actual manta ray, contact with inlets in the roughest weather can be ensured. It's a plan that merges environmental safety with thoroughly thought out processes.
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