Plastics challenge – Filtration of microplastics in ship greywater

The program will fund projects that proposed solution to wastewater treatment system that can capture and extract microplastics:

1. Be a viable cost-effective solution for the shipping industry, meaning that installing or retrofitting the system on a ship is not cost prohibitive.
   • The cost to ship owners for installing or retrofitting the system onto the ship should not represent an impediment for adopting the technology.
   • Operational costs for maintaining the system once installed should also be taken into account. For example, the system should be easy to access and designed in such a way that the unloading of the captured microplastic waste does not increase the ship’s time spent in port.
2. Be a technology that is lightweight, meaning that the weight of the system does not impede the ship’s performance. The weight of the technology is taken into account as added weight, which affects a ship’s fuel consumption.
3. Be a technology that can be retrofitted onto new or existing greywater treatment systems of vessels;
4. Have a containment system for collected microplastics;
5. Propose a technology that is able to measure the amount of microplastics captured and extracted from a ship’s greywater;
6. Be able to capture microplastics.

In addtion, the proposed solution should:

1. Apply a process that allows for the reuse as a feedstock in other industrial processes providing a value-added product/market for microplastics;
2. Be scalable for land based municipal wastewater treatment plants.