The Sea Cleaners hope to launch the Manta in 2024. The giant sailboat will aim to collect plastic waste at sea and turn much of it into electricity, directly on board.
-
@TheSeaCleaners
The navigator Yvan Bourgnon presented this Tuesday a new version of a future boat, the
Manta
, with which he wants to fight against plastic pollution in the oceans and which must be operational in 2024.
The giant sailboat, 56 meters long and 26 wide, will be able to collect 1 to 3 tonnes of waste per hour.
The plastic ones will be directly converted on board into electricity.
Yvan Bourgnon plans to deploy the
Manta
in large rivers, their estuaries, near coasts, on the outskirts of large coastal towns.
Where plastic pollution begins and where waste has not yet had time to fragment.
A waste collection center, a sorting center and a recycling plant.
The
Manta
will perform these three functions at the same time, with the particularity of doing so on the water.
Because the
Manta
is first and foremost a boat.
A giant sailboat out of the head of the Franco-Swiss skipper Yvan Bourgnon.
At the forefront of plastic pollution during his offshore races, in 2015 the sailor launched “The Sea Cleaners”, an association which aims to build the largest catamaran possible to collect plastic waste at sea and along the coasts.
Conveyor belts to remove waste from the water
This Tuesday morning, Yvan Bourgnon and his team unveiled the model of their future ship with which, from now on, they will approach the shipyards.
“Construction should start in 2022 for launch in 2024,” says the skipper.
The contours of the project have evolved somewhat since 2015. The boat, already, will no longer be 60 m long and 49 wide, as initially planned, but 56 m by 26. “The idea was to make it more flexible, more manageable ”, we explain to The Sea Cleaners.
Also abandoned the large harrows which were to collect the waste at the back of the boat and bring it up via a conveyor belt to the hulls of the
Manta
.
Instead, the ship will advance like the manta ray, from which it borrows the name: the mouth wide open.
“Two conveyor belts, under the ship and sinking up to one meter under water, will capture the waste [The
Manta will
target macro-waste, greater than 1 cm] and will bring it up to the pontoon, explains Frédéric Silvert, technical director of The Sea Cleaners.
To complete this, the
Manta
will be fitted with three nets at the rear, two of which are on the sides of the ship, attached to outriggers, which will thus allow for a collection span of 46 meters.
"These are not trawls, but surface nets which collect only at a depth of one meter and which allow the fish to escape from below", specifies Yvan Bourgnon.
Finally, two small pollution control boats, called
Mobuila
, will complete the collection system.
Embarked at the back of the giant sailboat, they will be deployed in narrow, shallow and inaccessible areas for the
Manta
.
The Sea Cleaners hope to launch the Manta in 2024. The giant sailboat will aim to collect plastic waste at sea and turn much of it into electricity, directly on board.
- @TheSeaCleaners
One to three tonnes of waste collected per hour
Thus armed, The Sea Cleaners plans to pick up one to three tonnes of waste per hour.
Once on board, they will be taken to the sorting unit, still on the ship, where two operators are in charge.
“You need this manual work, if only to put a turtle back to sea as quickly as possible that has ended up on the conveyor belt,” explains Frédéric Silvert.
Organic matter - pieces of wood, algae - will take the same path.
Metal, glass or aluminum waste will be separated to be stored with a view to being brought back ashore for recycling by local channels.
What about plastics, the bulk of the garbage that the
Manta will
bring up?
“The original idea was to collect plastic waste at sea to bring it back to land and process it,” recalls Yvan Bourgnon.
We were then looking to have the greatest possible storage capacity on the ship - around 250 tonnes - to stay at sea as long as possible. But the more we advance in our knowledge of this marine plastic waste, the more we realize that they are difficult to recycle, because they are damaged by currents or by salinity.
In addition, in developing countries, off which
Manta
plans to work, recycling channels do not always exist or are in their infancy.
Plastic waste converted into energy
“This will not prevent us, if we put together a still little degraded PET bottle, from putting it aside for recycling on land,” explains Yvan Bourgnon.
But 95% of the plastic waste collected will immediately take the direction of the energy recovery unit.
The centerpiece of the ship, where waste will be converted into electricity by a pyrolysis system.
"The plastics will be melted at high temperature and the gas thus generated will heat a fluid which itself will feed a turbo-alternator in order to produce electricity", describes Yvan Bourgnon.
This electricity will operate this on-board recovery plant and, moreover, will make it possible to complete the electricity mix of the
Manta
, which gives pride of place to renewable energies with two wind turbines, two hydrogenerators, nearly 500 m² of solar panels.
Without forgetting the 1,500 m² of sails, "which will remain the main mode of propulsion of the
Manta
", indicates Frédéric Silvert.
Very quickly several "Manta"?
Once out of the shipyard, the
Manta
will spend 300 days a year at sea, chaining three-week missions.
Not so much in oceanic gyres, these areas of convergence of sea currents where plastic waste very often ends its course.
The Sea Cleaners wants to do more to act at the source of plastic pollution in the oceans.
"That is to say in the large rivers, their estuaries, near the coasts, on the outskirts of large coastal towns," list Yvan Bourgnon.
These areas concentrate a lot of waste which often has recently drifted into the water.
They have not yet had time to fragment and are therefore easier to collect.
"
It remains to find an economic model in
Manta
.
The construction of the boat costs 30 million euros.
And at sea, it will operate with 22 crew members, including five operators responsible for sorting and recycling waste.
For this first ship, to be seen as a demonstrator, The Sea Cleaners calls on sponsorship.
The fundraising, still ongoing, has already raised a third of the 30 million, announces Yvan Bourgnon.
But the skipper is already planning to build several
Mantas
"managed like a garbage truck or a sorting center", he explains.
That is to say with the financial involvement of States and / or local communities to clean up their waters, in order to preserve their marine biodiversity and the activities that depend on it.
From fishing to tourism.
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