Plans are to install the barrier in the second quarter of 2016 23 km off the coast of Scheveningen. It will be the first time the barrier design will be put to the test in open waters.
Slat is also aiming for a prototype of about 100 km long, which he expects to collect half of the floating waste from a gyre in about ten years time. His team wants to deploy this first operational cleanup system off the coast of Tsushima Island, Japan, in the second half of 2016.
Ultimately Slat wants to remove all plastic from the oceans using long (100 kilometres) screen of about 1 meter deep that are anchored in the five ocean gyres where plastic waste accumulates.
The system is passive, but because of the water movement of the gyre, plastic will accumulate against the screen and especially in the central angle of the screen. There the density will be so large that the waste can easily be lifted out into a large floating container.
The primary objective of the set up on the North Sea is to monitor the effects of real-life sea conditions, with a focus on waves and currents. Cameras and sensors will monitor the motions of the barrier and the loads on the system.
Before this outdoor experiment, the engineers of the Ocean Cleanup have been doing scale model testing in controlled environments at the Deltares and MARIN basins.
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