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

海洋塑料污染是最严重的全球环境问题之一。据估计，海洋中已经有5万亿块塑料碎片。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。塑料污染对全球旅游业和野生动物的影响每年造成130亿英镑的损失，并导致数百万动物过早死亡，包括海洋哺乳动物，海鸟和鱼类。尽管问题的紧迫性和规模，目前从河流和海洋中收集塑料的方法是无效的。在河流中，使用渔网手动清除塑料仍然是主流，但效率低下（<1%），在发达国家经济上不可行。在巴尔的摩看到的垃圾轮被认为是在河流环境中清除塑料的最先进技术，但它们无法收集微塑料-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寻求克服现有解决方案的局限性，通过开发一种新颖的多功能涡轮机械系统“Cobalt”，提供第一个真正可扩展的技术，以减少塑料流入世界海洋。它可以不显眼地附着在一系列静态和动态的河流基础设施上，过滤和收集下游约15%的宏观和微观塑料。通过与伦敦帝国理工学院戴森设计工程学院的合作，该方法提供了：[1]能够回收长度为1毫米的微塑料的过滤器。[2]革命性的自清洁机制，利用河流提供的机械力维持最大效率。[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，钴的发电能力超过收集塑料所需的发电能力。在Innovate-UK的支持下，需要一个为期24个月的研发计划，以提供在实验室和模拟环境中验证的原型。如果成功，钴将真正彻底改变海洋塑料污染问题-到2025年，有可能收集10%通过河流进入世界海洋的塑料。钴可以在全球范围内开采，该项目带来了显著的出口导向型增长，可观的投资回报率和纳税人价值。

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.