The Dutch foundation The Ocean Cleanup is developing technologies to extract plastic debris from the oceans and currently, the organisation is designing a barrier that will concentrate and extract the plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The design of the barrier, which consists of a floating element and a screen, is still in the conceptual phase. Marin has assisted in the design process by conducting model tests in its Offshore Basin for a 360 m barrier segment at a scale of about 1:18.
The two main goals of the tests were to provide loads and displacements for numerical model calibrations and to examine the 3D fluid-structure interactions and the barrier performance. Extreme conditions were focused on to explore the limits of the system and its ability to capture plastic.
Picture by The Ocean Cleanup.
