Background
This is the start of a trial: the trial of how I might go about applying my engineering/science knowledge to tackling some sort of plastic trash solution. I've had a number of different ideas float around my head while I'm falling asleep, but I know from my experience in the space industry that serious solutions take serious effort and are usually accomplished with the support of a serious team. It's daunting.I've looked around, though, for a team I could join and I always come up empty. I believe the reality is that cleaning up plastic in the oceans and rivers is a sure way to spend a lot of money with no return on the investment other than a warm feeling of accomplishment. This same economic problem exists for whole classes of problems and I believe it is one of the few failing areas of capitalism. It's rough because I know I would be happy to dedicate my life to this problem, but I can't pay my bills with good intentions.
However, I've recently left the space industry after 15 years to strike out as an entrepreneur. Among other things, this means I can dedicate more time to things I care about. If I can make money the other days of the week, then I like the idea of dedicating every Friday to a cause I care about. Right now, that cause is doing a deep dive into plastic solutions. And, maybe, maybe, if I can work the income streams the right way, I'll be able to expand my effort over time.
This effort will initially be documented on my personal blog. No use spending money and time to set something up if it's not going to be able to move forward for whatever reason. If it gains traction with myself then I'll find a more permanent solution down the line.
Initial Thoughts
I like the idea of finding and "dealing with" plastic in rivers and oceans. The largest impediment to this plan is that living in Colorado makes testing solutions something of an access problem. There's still something that calls to me, though. Maybe it's how much I enjoy SCUBA; there are few things I enjoy more than being underwater. And it's true that I've seen enough plastic on my dives that I've felt intrinsically motivated to do something about it. Is that a jellyfish? No, it's just a grocery bag out here miles away from the coast.From an engineering standpoint, it seems like it *might* be easier to have a vehicle autonomously patrol in the ocean than on the land. Not that it would be easy. Not at all. But energy demands on land are brutal. You've got to go over terrain, through/over/around vegetation, avoid humans and other dangers, and so on. A boat, on the other hand, can float around in the middle of nowhere and use wave energy for locomotion. It can store power until it reaches a threshold and then take action. The pros vs. land vehicles are many.
Of course, there are drawbacks. Maintenance is prohibitive. Everything about getting it licensed, communicating with it, fixing problems, and so on is a much larger production. While the vision may be a fleet of vehicles that float around for decades with minimal maintenance, the reality is much harsher.
But, really, I'm way ahead of myself here on potential end solutions. Why talk about some theoretical and magical answer when there are hundreds of little and large steps to be considered before one can even get to a vehicle of any sort?
A Rough Map
There are two things I want to investigate over the next few months:- Deep dives into what others are doing
- Deep scientific inquiries into how to reliably identify plastic in the environment
In the first case, my plan is to read, read, read, and send questions. I'll look to document what I find and build my own personal narrative.
In the second case, I'll use my scientific/engineering background to do simulations, perhaps some testing, and maybe some publishing if I put together anything good.
My commitment is that I will make one post every Friday. On what I call "Plastic Friday". I will start with the first case and will set the four Fridays of June 2019 to pushing it forward. Specifically, I am committing to work in this way until through June 28th. I'll reevaluate from that point.
Today's Reading
First google search returned https://www.parley.tv/#fortheoceans
They have a weekly update/new review. I was particularly interested to learn about the ghost net problem. One article they pointed to talked about how fishing lines/nets are hurting the right whale population.
Another link, this time to business insider, talked about finding plastic in a remote island chain. The lead researcher, Jennifer Lavers, states that more than 90% of the plastic is under the surface of the beach. The article summarizes by saying that if you're shocked by the images of beaches covered with plastic, then you'll be even more shocked by knowing that it's the "tip of the iceberg". I'm shocked... I thought I was fairly educated and I did not know this. Also surprising was that they estimated there were 370,000 toothbrushes on the beaches. Even if they were off by an order of magnitude... even by two orders of magnitude... how on earth are we dumping that many toothbrushes into the ocean? On a positive note (of sorts), only 25% of the plastic seemed to be single-use.
One intriguing article was one that talked about FTIR laser spectroscopy to find plastic. This is one of my two categories that I want to do a deep dive on. The researcher's unit is portable. You put the plastic under the sensor and away it goes. The researcher is Sarah-Jeann Royer. I've previously read her paper on methane release from plastics when I worked on Ball's "Methane Monitor" and on my own PhD project.
When I dug deeper into the Agilent solution, I found an interesting white paper they wrote. There is a line in there:
"Due to the hydrophobic nature of many plastics, organic matter will aggregate onto its surfaces and must be removed before the microplastic can be characterized spectroscopically"
I think that's a fascinating reality. Our eyes see the colors... the texture... the shape... of large plastic pieces and it's usually "obvious" that it's plastic. Our eyes will fail on the small things, though. Infrared spectroscopy seems like an area where a more refined signature could be used to detect/differentiate in situ. But the way surface contamination interferes with the IR signature complicates things. In their paper, they have to use a high-end cleansing to get back to bare plastic. Then it takes them many hours of time to take and process the data. That seems incredibly unsustainable. (It's true that they are trying to detect many thousand tiny particles smaller than 0.1 mm)
I'm curious to see IR signatures with and without various types of contamination.
I also thought it was interesting that their IR range is from ~2.6 um to above 11um. I recall reading a paper recently that found good signatures in the near IR region. That region can be nice since relatively cheap InGaAs cameras can be found. There's also more solar power available in those regions for passive systems to pick up a signal. Lasers are harder, but the quantum cascade lasers seems promising.
What would it take to get the time down to seconds?
Is there a way to "taste" microparticles?
One specific area I've been pondering are the ghost nets. In this article, they talk about finding one convoluted mess of net that was 40 tons. 40 tons! The article says that large fishing corporations intentionally set these nets adrift, covering them in fabric and flags to create an artificial, floating "reef" of sorts. Over time (6 months to a year) they become havens for bacteria, then mollusks, then fish, then larger fish, etc... Embedded sensors track the quantity of life around the floating nets and report back. When there's sufficient life the company will come out and fish around the net. The whole time, fish and sharks and turtles are getting entangled in the nets and dying, which attracts more predators.
The nets are often times intentionally tangled up in corrals and near shore. These are showing up in places like Hawaii in increasing numbers.
The article talks about the nets being so entangled with the shore and corral that it can take a team of 8 people 40 hours to remove one. There are so many nets that they don't have enough manpower to take care of them all, so they're hanging out on the beach or just off-shore. Incredible.
My takeaways for today
I spent most of my time reading parley's website. It looks like they're committed to making weekly updates and I look forward to reading them. Some of their content looked more like placeholders with no meaningful or even dead links. Still, it's clear they're making a hard push for something.
So far, I've been somewhat surprised that the same handful of names are coming up. That might be due to the nature of funding, their partnership with Parley, or...? As I'm able to look at other major websites I'm hoping to find more names.
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