SCRAP Bots

A Biomimetic Approach to Cleaning the Oceans

Assignment 10.1D Jake Hvistendahl Final Project

Design Brief
The Ocean Gyres: The Issue:
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Ocean Gyres are areas where currents create very large, slowly swirling vortexes. There are five major gyres located around the world. The swirling action of the currents collects floating debris and concentrates it towards the center.

There is a patch of floating man-made garbage roughly 1.5 times the size of the United States in the Eastern Pacific Gyre. The other four major Ocean Gyres are in a similar state. 90% of this debris is plastic, some of it in pieces smaller than 5mm (micro-plastics), and almost none of it is biodegradable.

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Most of this (70%) will eventually sink to the sea floor, but some will remain floating indefinitely.
Natural processes continually break apart and shred the plastic into smaller and smaller pieces, much of which is ingested by animals or washes up on beaches. Green Peace estimates that over one million birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and turtles are killed every year from ingesting plastics.

Design Brief
Sponsoring Organization:
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This biomimetic design brief and the design and processes that follow, have been created for The Clean Oceans Project (TCOP). TCOP is a 501(c)3 marine environmental non-profit organization dedicated to a future with oceans free of plastic pollution. TCOPs approach begins with education and the creation of teams for future exploration to document, track, and remove plastic debris from the oceans. TCOP is looking for approaches to both filter plastics from ocean water and organize the plastic for transportation to processing and recycling facilities on shore.

Design Brief
Project Goals:
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Reduce the amount of plastics floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the other Ocean Gyres. Reclaim and reuse as much of this plastic resource as possible. Protect Marine Life that is negatively effected by this plastic soup. Ensure healthier beaches and help sustain marine based tourism economies.

Design The design will filter, capture, and Functions: collect plastics from the surface and
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Educate people about the dangers of plastic waste and how it spreads to marine habitats

subsurface of the ocean. The design will attempt to prevent harm to ocean fauna and plankton that may live on or in the plastic soup of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It will also include a design for conglomerating, floating, and transporting the bulk plastic after it has been collected. The design will perform functions related to communicating and cooperating with other similar systems and necessary support systems.

Design Brief
Design Description
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Operating Conditions
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The Swarming Collection Robots for Aquatic Purification (SCRAP) system uses a collaborative approach between mainland recycling and educational efforts along with the autonomous collection vessels and manned support transport ships, to efficiently and safely clean the oceans of plastic debris, recycle the accumulated plastics, and help prevent future pollution. The SCRAP bots are designed to safely filter, collect, contain, and hold the plastic debris until a manned support vessel can retrieve the bulk material and bring it to recycling centers on shore. The SCRAP bots are only one piece in this larger operation that can one day, hopefully, reduce or entirely do away with the issues posed by marine pollution from consumer plastics.

The robots will by operating autonomously at sea for lengthy periods of time. The systems themselves, and their accumulated cargo of filtered plastics will need to be able to endure in this marine environment with little maintenance. The most pressing issues of operating in the ocean gyres come from wind, high seas, erosive salt exposure, and material degradation from prolonged UV exposure. Support vessels will provide maintenance to the crafts when they come and collect the stored plastics. Therefore the system must be constructed to be easily disassembled for ease of component replacement and repair.

Design Brief
Existing Design Example
Boyan Slats Ocean Cleaning Array This design has received a lot of attention in the past few years. The designer, Boyan Slat, claims to able to clean 7,250,000 tons of plastic from a single Ocean Gyre in 5 years. This design is still in the feasibility analysis stage.
The ocean array requires tethered and

anchored structures that many detractors feel would not withstand the operating conditions.

Over the years there have been many different ocean cleaning designs brought forth from designers, inventors, and engineers, but most of these fail to take into account the size of the problem (the oceans are huge and many millions of miles need to be covered), and that the plastics are moving and are not all floating on the surface. TCOP has been using tracking equipment to predicatively model where large concentrations of plastics should be located. The Clean Oceans Project also recognizes that there is significant need to prevent plastics migrating into the ocean, while still attempting to clean up the existing problem before more environmental damage occurs. The solution to this problem cannot be simply engineered, there needs to be a concerted effort to curtail plastic pollution on a multinational level as well as a collaborative effort to reclaim what we have already carelessly tossed into the oceans.

C2B Design Spiral

Design Process
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The process for creating design strategies for filtering, capturing, and storing plastics in the ocean began by working around the Challenge to Biology design spiral five separate times.
The first three trips began with different challenges, and the last two touched back on challenges and functions previously investigated in the spiral. The following pages will describe the evolution of the design as I progressed along the design spiral.

Trip #1
Particle Capture

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Identify The Real Challenge S Need to capture solid plastic particles of various sizes that are suspended in sea water. Interpret Design Brief S Need to filter abiotic solids from water. Discover Natural Models 1. Gill rakes in fish are used to prevent large particles from exiting the oral cavity through the gills. Sometimes the gill rakes are parallel to the flow of water acting to concentrate solids that are too large to make it past the rakes. 2. Bladderwort, a type of carnivorous aquatic plant uses tiny suction chambers to trap its very small prey. When prey triggers small filaments around the chamber opening, the whole chamber expands rapidly, opening a trap door and sucking the prey inside. 3. The Portuguese Man of War, a colony of different organisms called polyps, uses long tentacles to catch its prey, similar to a jellyfish. The upper polyp of the Man of War is inflated and is shaped to catch the wind. As the wind propels the creatures forward, their different sized tentacles are spread out by the movement, enhancing the area being actively filtered by the animals. Abstract Design Principles S These shells have thousands of tiny pores, where the interior opening to the channel is smaller than the exterior. S It is believed that this difference in size lends to the breathability and water resistance of the shell.

Trip #1
Particle Capture

Emulate Natures Strategies

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The filter will resemble a series of large, finely bristled plastic combs. With the teeth of the combs facing towards the rear of the water flow. The closely spaced bristles of the comb will allow water to flow through, but will prevent plastics larger than the holes from following. The filter combs will be offset slightly, to produce a narrowing channel towards the rear of the robot, where the subsequent collection filter and holding chamber will reside.

Evaluate Against Lifes Principles S Adopting this strategy fits with the Life Principle of Shape Rather Than Material, because the material used for the filter combs doesnt really matter. It is the shape and arrangement of this material that satisfies the function.

Trip #2
Collection

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Identify The Real Challenge S Collected materials need to be centralized, conglomerated, and moved back to shore. Interpret Design Brief S Materials need to be organized and bound together in a stable form. Discover Natural Models 1. Sand castle worms use an underwater glue to bind together grains of sand to create a housing for themselves. 2. Bagworm moths create a hard case around themselves out of organic materials found in their environment. These materials are spun together with silk to form a hard shell. 3. Some frog species create nests made of foam to contain and nurture their eggs. The foams are a mixture of excreted surfactants and pond water. Some species making floating rafts that are highly durable. Abstract Design Principles S Using the foam nesting frogs strategy, a foam is created using mechanical mixing with air and water. S A small amount of eggs and sperm are then deposited in this foam and the cycle is repeated until a large hemispherical raft forms.

Trip #2
Collection

Emulate Natures Strategies

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Bursts of a water proof, foaming glue are injected into a chamber behind the collection filters that contains a solution of agitated plastic particles. The foaming glue should bind some particles together forming clumps. More glue and air is injected into this increasingly aggregated mass until a large floating raft is formed by the foam and contains most of the particles. This raft can then be towed to processing plants on shore, or released to float until it reaches shore, and then is collected and processed locally.

Evaluate Against Lifes Principles S Adopting this strategy fits with the Life Principle of Redundancy, because the foam contains thousands of tiny air chambers. If one of these is popped there will still be thousands capable of keeping the raft afloat.

Trip #3
Surviving the Seas
Identify The Real Challenge S The filtering robots and their payloads of plastic have to be able to survive long sea voyages and storms without being destroyed or breaking apart. Interpret Design Brief S Need to have protection from abiotic factors including, wind, waves, and sunlight. Discover Natural Models 1. Some plant fruits, like the coconut and Polynesian Box Fruit, use hard rounded cases to protect their genetic material at the core, and can survive years at sea. 2. Some frogs use floating rafts of foam to protect their eggs from air and sunlight exposure. The refraction of the bubbles scatter UV effectively protecting the eggs. 3. Scallops have a shell made of composite layers of stiff and flexible materials. This composite prevents cracks from traveling between the stiff layers, and makes them very resistant to impact punctures. Abstract Design Principles S The hard round exterior of the Box Fruit and Coconuts protect by sealing out external factors, and the spherical shape allows them to tumble with the wind and rain without being broken apart. S Foams can create cases with hard shells once the foam dries. These foams also use very little material in comparison to the other strategies mentioned above.

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Trip #3
Surviving the Seas
Emulate Natures Strategies Create a spherical foam shell around the plastic debris balls that will protect it from deformation by waves. S Rotating water currents can spin the growing foam mass, and ensure that it forms in a rough sphere. S A spherical raft should be much more resilient than a flattened one, able to survive long amounts of time at sea.
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Evaluate Against Lifes Principles S Adopting this strategy fits with the Life Principle of Using Multifunctional Design, because the foam shell serves a number of functions, like collection, protection, and flotation.

Trip #4
Harm Prevention
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Identify The Real Challenge S Need to prevent harm to animals that live in the environment where these robots will be operating. Interpret Design Brief S Need to use strategies that deter biotic infiltration of the filter and foam chamber. Discover Natural Models 1. Humpback whales use bubble nets to corral small prey fish into a tight ball where they can be more easily eaten in one mouthful. 2. Many fish species use gill rakes to prevent prey and other large items from exiting through their gill openings and damaging these breathing apparatus. Abstract Design Principles S A wall of bubbles can be used to prevent fish from swimming in a certain direction. S Strong bars (gill rakes) can mechanically block the passage of fish from one area to another. S Using these strategies in reverse can prevent animals from entering certain areas where they are unwanted or harm could come to them.

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Trip #4
Harm Prevention
Emulate Natures Strategies
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Use an onboard air compressor and air stones to generate a dense line of bubbles directly in front of the opening to the final filter stage. S A set of bars can also prevent infiltration by large animals into the filter area. Making the filter resemble a basket with large opening at the front and smaller toward the rear. Evaluate Against Lifes Principles S Adopting this strategy fits with the Life Principle of Life Friendly Materials, because it will use air rather than electricity or other materials to discourage invasion by animals and fish.

Trip #5
Foam Creation
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Identify The Real Challenge S Need to create a water hardening foam and disperse it equitably into the plastic collection chamber. Interpret Design Brief S How would nature make foams capable of hardening under water, and how would these be dispersed? Discover Natural Models 1. Foams contain surfactants that reduce the surface tension of the water. Formation of the foam depends on precise dispersal and mixing of these surfactants. 2. Tungara Frogs make foam rafts on the surface of ponds. They begin by mixing a small amount of surfactant with pond water to create a raft seed. They then increase the amount of surfactants released and the mixing times with each following dispersal. Until a large raft is formed. 3. In the Ocean Gyres, constantly circulating water currents concentrate materials in the center of these currents. Abstract Design Principles S Foam rafts are made by increasing the amount of foam and the mixing time of these foams as time goes on. S Circular currents can help concentrate the foam in the center and prevent over dispersal.

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Trip #5
Foam Creation
Emulate Natures Strategies
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Create a hemispherical chamber with water circulating around the sides to concentrate the plastics and foam in the center. Slowly inject foams from the bottom of this chamber, and increase the amount and time of release between injections as the ball of foam grows in size. By injecting foams beneath the raft, hardening foams should alter buoyancy and rotate the raft, eventually creating a roughly spherical ball of foam.

Evaluate Against Lifes Principles S Adopting this strategy fits with the Life Principle of Self Organizing, because the shape of the foam is created naturally by how the foam is dispersed and the circulating currents. Mechanical shaping should not be required.

Design Presentation

S.C.R.A.P. Bots

Design Overview
The Swimming Collection Robots for Aquatic Purification (SCRAP Bots) operate autonomously in the ocean gyres, where they filter plastics and condense these plastics into floating foam balls. Design Elements: Two sails provide power for movement. Keel and sails can move to change direction of travel. Submerged pontoons hold foaming agent and provide lateral stability. Communication and radar dome aids navigation and coordination between bots. Solar panels power air compressors, communication equipment, and foam pumps.

Materials And Life Cycle

The SCRAP Bots are designed to be easily disassembled into their various components for ease of repair and recycling. A balance must be found between using sustainable materials and ensuring that the craft can survive the operating conditions. Suggested Materials: Sails Standard sailcloth textiles these can be recycled into other goods, like re-usable shopping bags. Main housing and structure FSC marine grade wood for structure, covered with recycled PET plastics for durability. Pontoon Recycled aluminum. Filter mesh and curved stanchions recycled marine plastics. The robots will be repaired, mostly through fast component replacement, by the manned support and collections vessels that come to gather the strings of plastic containing, foam balls that trail behind the robots.

Life Principles Emulated: -Uses Benign Manufacturing Uses Life friendly Materials (somewhat) Recycling All Materials (somewhat)

Functions Performed
The SCRAP bots perform many functions from energy capture to communication and education. Below is a list of these functions linked to the areas of the ship where they are accomplished. Functions: Movement across water Sails Power generation Solar Panels Power storage Batteries and compressed air tanks Communications central computer and antennas in dome Environmental sensing radar and information from weather satellites Plastics capture cross-filter and dead end filters Plastics collection and protection Plastics are encased in floating balls of foam Harm prevention Bubble nets formed by compressed air and hollow tubes

Function Plastics Capture

The SCRAP Bot has two main filtering areas that help it capture plastic debris that is suspended in the ocean currents. The first filter is a cross-filter based on the gill rakes of some fish species. These large curved filters have a plastic mesh that limits the size of objects that can pass through the sides. They operate parallel to the current created by the crafts movement, and help to concentrate materials by preventing their escape and channeling them towards the second filter at the rear. The cross filter also has openings in the bottom to allow active organisms an area of egress before reaching the bubble net that separates the two filters. The Second filter is a conical dead-end filter that helps move the plastic debris towards the foam chamber at the very rear. The mesh size here is smaller than that of the cross filter.

Life Principles Emulated: -Simple Common Building Blocks (filters) Shape Rather than Material (curved filters) Leverages Interdependence (filters gather material for more filters) Resourceful and Opportunistic (uses wasted plastic resource)

Function Plastics Collection

Once plastics have been captured by the filters, they are ushered into a spherical foam chamber half filled with sea water. Swirling currents keep the plastic bits in the center of the sphere. Nozzles at the base of the sphere release small amounts of bio-surfactant, air, and a binder, that when combined with water, create foam bubbles. The resulting foam floats to the surface and absorbs plastic particles along its journey. At the surface the currents help form the growing foam mass into a circular raft. After the surface raft has formed, foams start building up underneath, which alters the buoyancy of the raft, eventually flipping it over. With time the raft becomes a roughly spherical, floating ball of hardened foam. Once the foam ball reaches its maximum size it bumps into a toggle that triggers the firing of a barbed attachment line into the ball and the opening of the chamber. The ball is thereby attached to the craft and floats behind it until being collected by the manned vessels.

Life Principles Emulated: -Simple Common Building Blocks Uses Self Assembly (foam) Self Organizing (shape) Uses Multifunctional Design (foam balls) Fits Form to Function (spherical chamber)

Function Prevent Harm

The filtering process has been designed to reduce potential impacts on organisms that share the environment with the scrap bots. Fish and marine mammals are provided with avenues of escape by the cross-filter that is open in places on the bottom and between the overlapping filter surfaces. Small organisms like plankton are able to pass through the filter mesh with little disturbance. A bubble net formed between the cross and dead-end filters further deters active organisms from passing through to the conical dead-end filter.

Life Principles Emulated: -Diverse and Redundant (multiple strategies) Free Energy (solar powered compressors)

Function Communicate and Cooperate

The ships are controlled via an on-board computer system that uses information directed by satellites to plot its course. The communications equipment relays the ships position with GPS coordinates to other SCRAP Bots in the same region. This ensures an even spread of the robots throughout the ocean gyre. Information from floating sensors that track the plastic debris (currently in development by The Clean Ocean Project) can help guide the robots towards areas with the highest concentrations of plastic debris. The robots also relay information about their position and speed to manned support vessels. When these support vessels notice that a SCRAPs speed has dropped in relation to the wind speed, they can go and collect the floating debris balls that are causing drag and/or repair any damage to the craft.

Life Principles Emulated: -Fosters cooperative Relationships (recyclers and TCOP) Antenna, Signal, and Response Locally Attuned and Responsive (coordinates with sensors) Integrates Cyclical Processes

Design Proposal & Future Action

Sustainability
The design of the SCRAP Bots is more sustainable and innovative than other approaches to cleaning ocean plastics, because:
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For the Clean Ocean Project, The design presented in this document is a step in the right direction for creating a sustainable platform that can remove plastic debris from the oceans, but there are even more opportunities that can be leveraged before a final design. This design does not yet integrate the educational pollution prevention programs that your organization is creating. Nor does it go far enough to prevent damage to organisms in the ocean, specifically jellyfish that would get caught and killed by the filter. In moving forward I would like to test the filters in similar operating conditions to those of the ocean gyres, and use the data acquired to create an even safer and more effect plastic filtration system. The viability of recycling the reclaimed marine plastics and using them in the design needs to be investigated further and eventually tested. The foam encapsulation system is only theoretical at this point and will require extensive testing before a working prototype can be created. In order to expedite solutions to the issues above and those that are yet unforeseen, I would suggest opening up a relationship with the University of California education system in order to leverage all of the available expertise located within those schools. This could take the form of grant sponsorship for scientific investigations, or scholarly competitions to generate more innovative approaches to tackling these problems. I hope the design presented and the biomimetic approach used can offer some inspiration for the future designers of your working system. -Jake Hvistendahl

The filtering process aims to prevent harm to other organisms, and doesnt just retrieve surface pollutants. It uses life friendly production processes and materials. It is locally attuned and responsive to changing conditions. It is run entirely by renewable energy sources. The overall filtering function is decentralized and distributed among the many robots. Many design elements are multifunctional and there are many built-in redundancies.

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