TECHNOLOGY TO PROCESS OCEAN TRASH ON SHIPS

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It costs a lot of money and causes environmental pollution when maritime waste is moved to land for processing. In Busan, South Korea’s largest port city, a project is underway to develop a technology that can handle and process ocean trash on a ship without moving them to the shore. It is drawing attention as the first such project in the world.

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Garbage collected in the waters off the coast of Busan. They include waste tires, abandoned oil cans and litter from daily consumption. 138,000 tons of marine waste was collected along the nation’s coasts in 2020 alone. Processing maritime trash causes serious economic and environmental damage, since they have to be first transported to the ports. A project was launched to develop a groundbreaking technology that will be able to change this costly method. With this new technology, ocean trash are frozen and then broken down to pieces all on a ship. In the process, hydrogen is created and used as a power source to operate the vessel. This is the world’s first project to process and convert marine waste into an eco-friendly energy source.

[Soundbite] Lee Je-myung(Head, Pusan Nat’l Univ. Hydrogen Ship Technology Center) : "It is possible to obtain hydrogen, the most eco-friendly energy from maritime garbage and use it as an energy source to operate ships."

Led by Pusan National University, the project will cost 45 billion won by 2026 with the participation of 16 companies and agencies including Samsung Heavy Industries. More technologies, like pyrolysis and gas collection, will be developed with the goal to commercialize related products.

[Soundbite] Shin Jae-young(Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries) : "The first goal is to develop and commercialize the technology. And then, with the project, we can target the global market."

Attention is naturally drawn to the technology that will collect and recycle maritime waste in a one-stop process aboard a ship.