Wärtsilä along with Grimaldi Group have unveiled a new system that uses exhaust gas scrubber washwater to tackle the amount of microplastics in the world’s oceans.
368 million tonnes of plastic were produced in 2019 worldwide, and around 3%, or 11.4 million tonnes, of this plastic ultimately ends up in the ocean.
To tackle the growing amount of microplastics in the world’s seas, Grimaldi has developed a system that filters out microplastics from open loop scrubber washwater.
Wärtsilä, will take the microplastics filtration system, which traps plastic particles before the washwater is returned to the ocean, to market.
The capability to filter microplastics will be an integrated feature of Wärtsilä’s future wash-water treatment system.
The new system uses the natural capabilities of an open loop scrubber to contribute to cleaning the oceans during each voyage.
Currently, a 10-megawatt engine will require scrubbers to process approximately 450 m3 of water per hour, potentially resulting in a large amount of microplastics being captured from seawater.
According to early test results, the microplastics filtration system is efficient in capturing particles smaller than 10µm and the captured concentration by volume equals around 76 particles/m3.
The idea for this innovative technology originated from recognising that open loop exhaust gas cleaning systems can draw seawater for exhaust scrubbing and simultaneously collect microplastic present in the oceans as part of their normal operation
commented Emanuele Grimaldi, Managing Director of the Grimaldi Group. “
The partners have already completed pilot testing of this system onboard one vessel deployed between Civitavecchia and Barcelona. The results are promising, with 64,680 microplastic particles collected on a single voyage between these two ports.