Experimental study of an ocean surface cleaning system

Abstract

This paper presents a novel design of an ocean surface cleaning system (OSCS), which can be operated at various sea sites. The system weathervanes around the mooring system, so that the marine debris can be effectively concentrated by the OSCS. In order to verify the technical feasibility and efficiency of this novel OSCS, a series of experiments in a wave tank were conducted. The prototypes and metocean data were designed to clean marine debris at Ningbo Xiangshan Port. From the statistics of the testing results, it is found that the novel OSCS can effectively concentrate and clean marine debris of different types. We also measured the hydrodynamic responses of the OSCS under various sea conditions. The results show that the system's motion responses in the vertical plane are small, indicating the marine debris could not escape from the top and bottom of the system. Meanwhile, the motions in the horizontal plane are sufficiently high to cover a large ocean surface area. The present study indicates that the novel OSCS can be used to clean a large ocean surface at high efficiency.