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

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.