Remora Cobalt - A turbomachinery system to collect micro and macro plastics to clean up rivers and oceans

Remora Cobalt - 一种涡轮机械系统，用于收集微观和宏观塑料以清理河流和海洋

• 批准号: 104685
• 金额: $ 59.65万
• 依托单位: ICHTHION LIMITED
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=104685
• 关键词: Remora; Cobalt; turbomachinery; system; collect

Ocean plastic pollution is one of the most critical global environmental issues. It is estimated that five trillion pieces of plastic debris are in the oceans already. An additional 17.5 million tonnes of plastic is forecast to enter the oceans annually by 2025, with 80% of this coming from just 10 major rivers. The effects of plastic pollution on tourism and wildlife cost £13 billion a year globally and leads to the premature death of millions of animals, including marine mammals, seabirds and fish.Despite the urgency and scale of the problem, current approaches to collect plastic from rivers and oceans is ineffective. In rivers, manual plastic removal using nets remains the mainstay, but is inefficient (<1% collected) and not economically viable in the developed world. Trash-Wheels as seen in Baltimore, are considered state-of-the-art for removal of plastics in river environments, however they are unable to collect microplastics -- the main cause of premature death for marine wildlife. Efforts to collect plastic from ocean environments are a poor use of resources, with studies showing it is 30x more effective to collect plastic before it has reached deep-water environments.Remora Marine seek to overcome the limitations of current solutions to deliver the first truly scalable technology to reduce the flow of plastics into the world's oceans by developing a novel, versatile turbo machinery system, 'Cobalt', that can unobtrusively attach to a range of static and dynamic fluvial infrastructures to filter and collect approximately 15% of macro and micro plastics passing downstream. Through the collaboration with the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London, the approach offers: [1] Filters capable of retrieving microplastics down to 1mm in length. [2] A revolutionary self-cleaning mechanism to sustain maximum efficiency using the mechanical force supplied by the river flow. [3] Versatile axle design allowing Cobalt to be attached to a variety of static rivers infrastructures. [4] Additional output of electricity, with the generative power of Cobalt more than that required for collecting the plastics.With Innovate-UK support, a 24-month programme of R&D is required to deliver a prototype validated both in the laboratory and simulated environment. If successful, Cobalt will truly revolutionise the ocean plastic pollution problem -- with the potential to collect 10% of the plastic entering the world's oceans through rivers by 2025. Cobalt can be exploited globally, with the project delivering significant export led growth, substantial RoI and taxpayer value.

海洋塑料污染是最严重的全球环境问题之一。据估计，海洋中已有五万亿件塑料碎片。预计到 2025 年，每年将有 1750 万吨塑料进入海洋，其中 80% 来自 10 条主要河流。塑料污染对旅游业和野生动物造成的影响每年在全球造成 130 亿英镑的损失，并导致数百万动物过早死亡，其中包括海洋哺乳动物、海鸟和鱼类。尽管问题十分紧迫且规模巨大，但目前从河流和海洋收集塑料的方法仍然无效。在河流中，使用网进行手动塑料清除仍然是主流，但效率低下（收集量<1%），并且在发达国家经济上不可行。巴尔的摩的垃圾轮被认为是清除河流环境中塑料的最先进技术，但它们无法收集微塑料，而微塑料是海洋野生动物过早死亡的主要原因。从海洋环境中收集塑料是对资源的一种不良利用，研究表明，在塑料到达深水环境之前收集塑料的效率提高了 30 倍。Remora Marine 致力于克服当前解决方案的局限性，提供第一个真正可扩展的技术，通过开发一种新颖的多功能涡轮机械系统“Cobalt”来减少塑料流入世界海洋，该系统可以不引人注目地附着在一系列静态和动态河流上 过滤和收集约 15% 流经下游的宏观和微观塑料的基础设施。通过与伦敦帝国理工学院戴森设计工程学院合作，该方法提供： [1] 能够回收长度小至 1 毫米的微塑料的过滤器。 [2] 一种革命性的自清洁机制，利用河水提供的机械力来维持最大效率。 [3] 多功能轴设计允许 Cobalt 连接到各种静态河流基础设施。 [4] 额外的电力输出，钴的发电量超过了收集塑料所需的量。在 Innovate-UK 的支持下，需要为期 24 个月的研发计划来交付在实验室和模拟环境中验证的原型。如果成功，Cobalt 将真正彻底改变海洋塑料污染问题——到 2025 年，有可能收集通过河流进入世界海洋的塑料的 10%。钴可以在全球范围内开发，该项目将带来显着的出口带动增长、可观的投资回报率和纳税人价值。