Team Name: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia

Team deliverables

Why this competition?

The Great Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Atlantic Ocean garbage patches are the largest among many huge islands of trash that have accumulated from the waste of mainland areas, ships, and offshore platforms, each of which threaten marine ecosystems. Scientists estimate that about 250,000 metric tons of plastic garbage pollute the oceans each year, and plastics take thousands of years to decay. In fact, the global economy loses up to $19 billion each year due to marine plastic pollution .

Cleaning up the ocean is not a simple task and often requires expensive equipment and manpower, which may lead to even greater pollution. The U.S. Department of Energy Marine Energy Collegiate Competition provides our team with an opportunity to contribute to green, renewable, and area-efficient marine energy technology development that could provide a sustainable method to power the ocean cleanup effort.

Project description, including application in the blue economy

Traditional marine cleanup methods rely on cost-ineffective, unsustainable, fuel-powered vessels.

Our team aims to develop a garbage collecting boat that harnesses energy from the ocean waves and currents for the purposes of ocean cleanup. The boat comprises an ocean wave turbine, which can harvest energy, and an efficient waste collecting system.

This system will be more sustainable, effective, and cost efficient than traditional ocean cleanup efforts. A successfully commercialized ocean-powered product will be a valuable and marketable asset as we seek to remove harmful and costly plastic pollution from our oceans.

Game plan

The team comprises three subteams. The turbine team is responsible for the design and prototyping of the turbine to power the device. The collection team is charged with designing the garbage collection systems. The business team is responsible for all marketing and outreach.

The turbine and collection teams will build computer-aided design models of our concept. We will run simulations through software such as ANSYS Fluent and Solidworks to ensure the structure can handle all loads.

Based on the results of these simulations, the turbine team will create a scaled-down turbine prototype (approximately one meter wide and half a meter in diameter) to test the effectiveness of the turbine in a water tank.

The garbage collection team will design a system that collects and stores garbage retrieved from the ocean. We will develop a scaled-down prototype to demonstrate the basic functionality of the device, as well as a full-scale prototype with advanced functionality.

Along with helping identify potential end users for our device, from which we will collect feedback for the engineering teams, the business team will help us find end users for the collected garbage. This subteam will assess the market through interviews and other market research, plan the commercialization process, and organize community engagement events.

Team strengths

The team has benefited from both our excitement to learn and willingness to adapt. We find strength in our diversity, as each member comes to the team with different passions, insights, and perspectives. The team also boasts graduate students who are experienced in mechanical design and simulation to help guide the team to finish the concept validation and prototype testing. Overall, what allows us to succeed is our collective passion for engineering and design, which motivates us to meet often and bring our best effort to the objective at hand.

Additionally, the team has access to the Center of Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems at Virginia Tech, which offers many resources for building and developing ocean energy devices.

Team hurdles

The first hurdle our team faced was coordinating and communicating over Zoom due to COVID restrictions. Virtual meetings make it difficult to communicate ideas, especially during detailed discussions and the design process.

It was difficult for us to find reliable information on the design and capabilities of our novel turbine concept, requiring the team to generate new ideas and verify the design.

Each subteam has also encountered small hurdles. The turbine and collection teams both struggled to decide on proper materials and parts for the design. Another issue is that, without direct access to the ocean, it was difficult to determine specific ocean conditions and garbage distributions, forcing the team to design for a more general case. The turbine team was unable to design for exact wave conditions, and the collection team could not optimize their solution for exact garbage conditions. The business team has faced challenges reaching out to and receiving responses from stakeholders.

Competition objectives

Our main objective is to design an effective autonomous ocean cleanup device powered by the ocean itself. We intend to design an aero foil turbine that can harvest energy from ocean waves, as well as a mounting mechanism to attach the device to the garbage collecting boat. We also hope to increase interest in marine renewable energy.

Social media accounts

Facebook: @virginiatech

Twitter: @virginia_tech

Instagram: @virginia.tech, @vtoceancleanup

This portal is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) under Contract Number DE- AC36-08GO28308 with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Contract Number DE-AC05-76RL01830 with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Contract Number DE-NA0003525 with Sandia National Laboratories, as part of the MHK Data Communities project. The United States Government retains, and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes.

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