Preliminary+Design+-+Team+3

Big Bad Garbage Collector Preliminary Synopsis

After learning about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, our group has been tasked with the responsibility of the removal and cleaning of all the trash in the Garbage Patch in the most efficient and ecologically sound way that we could think of. We are focused on the gyre in the Western Pacific, and it is our mission to clean up the trash without disturbing any of the wildlife, and turn it into the ocean that it was before. So far, we have come up with a very basic design to be rid of the trash in the pacific. This device involves two conveyer belts that create a current to pull the trash into a filter system, which is then placed into a containment system and taken away. The current will not be strong enough to pull in fish that can swim away, so that is of no worry, and they will also stay away because of the noise alone. This trash will then be sent to any co gen plant that we can find on the coast near the Pacific, where it will be taken care of from there.

Final Design Synopsis

For our solution to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, we modified the idea of 19 year old Boy an Slat for an ocean garbage collector. The idea effectively collects trash that may be in the ocean, organizes it, and then stores it for an easy way to remove it from the ocean.

It starts with two “conveyer belts” on the side of the main hull, that extend hundreds of feet out on both sides, and are moving in the direction away from the hull. This creates a current that pulls water towards the hull, and in that current, the trash gets stuck and begins moving towards the hull as well. Once it gets close enough to the hull, two augers, one on each side, begin to collect the trash and place it in the wash plant, which is the main organizing chamber in the collector. It takes the large pieces of trash and separates them from the small pieces, and does this because the large parts can be used again, possibly melted down into other parts and recycled, and the small parts can not be used for much or recycled. Once it gets separated, two conveyor belts take the large and small trash to two different places to be deposited, one for the big and one for the small. This organized trash can then be taken away, and replaced with two different boxes so the process can start all over again.

The modifications that we made on the machine have to do with the addition of a wash plant and augers and increasing the size of the collectors. We made the augers grab the trash so they don’t just guide it in, and we added a wash plant to assist in the organizing of the garbage and to clean it before it gets reused. We thought it necessary to increase the size of the collectors because if they’re bigger, you won’t need to replace them as much, allowing for more trash to be collected and less time spent replacing it. We thought these modifications would have a positive impact on the machine, and make it not only more time efficient, but more efficient in cleaning up the vast amounts of trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,