There are billions of pounds of plastic in the ocean - but scientists think this machine can clean it up
REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
Plastic clumps and particles account for 70% of all litter in the ocean, representing billions of pounds of material that present a serious hazard to ocean life.
But sifting small pieces of plastic out of the largest bodies of water on the planet is a major challenge.
Already, machines exist that can sift plastic particles out of salt water and convert them into their base hydrocarbons - the building blocks of fuel. But those machines are generally too big and unwieldy do deploy where they can be the most useful: in the oceans themselves.
A new project, presented at the most recent meeting of the American Chemical Society, aims to do just that.
Claudia Rocha/American Chemical Society
Of course, though the project was created with the goal of improving the environment in mind, it has at least one built-in environmental drawback: Converting all the billions of pounds of ocean plastic into a hydrocarbon fuel, then burning that fuel, would likely add a non-trivial amount of carbon to the atmosphere.
The first major test of the reactor will take place in Santa Cruz, California, where it will convert plastics into diesel for the local government to power city vehicles. Whether similar reactors will actually be deployed out on the water in any large-scale way remains to be seen.
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