Offshore Conceptual Plastic Waste Collection and Treatment Towards Clean Ocean

The recent social care about the concentration of plastics in the ocean arises with the necessity of developing solutions to this problem. Some projects are dealing with the technology of collection, however, the follow-up transfer onshore is not usually included in the solution. This study suggests designing a vessel with available waste treatment technologies that can use the waste to recover energy. Simultaneously, the technologic vessel has to regularly visit collectors and ports to supply produced commodities and crew. A mixed integer linear model is developed to find the optimal balance between capacities of considered technologies and also to simulate the voyage with all respective operations. Waste-to-Energy, pyrolysis, desalination, sorting and other mechanical processes are assumed onboard. The vessel is designed to utilize the produced energy and products onboard including heat generation, electricity, water, and oil. The evaluation of suitable technologies is realized through techno-economic models which are needed for all considered subsystems from the complex treatment chain. The analysis of project viability requires detailed multi-disciplinary data. The main output of the presented approach is sensitivity analysis for critical parameters, which gives greater insight into the issue and directs further research from a general level through the concept to refine the input data and boundary conditions of the task in the model. The Pacific Garbage Patch was chosen as the testing area for the case study. The presented approach enables to compare different ways of plastic processing. Graphic Abstract