MARIN assists The Ocean Cleanup by testing its pioneering barrier


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. Joost Sterenborg, j.sterenborg@marin.nl


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arriers are not new in the maritime industry as booms have been used to confine oil spills for many years. However, in contrast to the barriers used to confine oil, the plastic con-


centration barriers are deployed for extended periods of time and can be much longer. The Ocean Cleanup is considering developing barriers of up to 100 km in length. This heavily impacts the requirements


on the structural and material properties of the barrier and how they are going to be moored also has to be considered.


100 km barrier The design of the barrier, which consists of a floating element and a screen, is still in the conceptual phase. MARIN assisted in the design process by conducting model tests in


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