SBIR-STTR Award

The Opportunity.Alaska's beaches are covered with hundreds of tons of Plastic Ocean Waste (POW)that has been deposited into the water from a myriad of counties including Russia Japan Korea Chinaand the United States.There are some collection efforts that focus on removing debris from beaches butthere is no effort made toward recycling the POW it is sent to a landfill.There are millions of pounds ofPOW that could be converted into useful and profitable products.There is also the opportunity to providerural coastal Alaska communities with revenue generation for both collection and production.The Proposal.Participation in recycling efforts can be improved by offering compensation for the recycledplastics.POW can be collected by local fishers and boaters and brought to port for purchase.OceanBound Plastic (OBP) can be collected through residential recycling programs that offer compensation forsorted and cleaned plastics.The challenge is the development of a feasible local recycling system thatconverts plastics to products.The solution is a Mobile Plastic Ocean Waste Recycler deployed in multiplecoastal communities throughout the year.The Approach.In a prior Phase I EPA SBIR we designed two modules for processing POW/OBP: aPolymer Preparation Module for sorting cleaning grinding and drying plastic; and a Recycled PlasticLumber Production (RPL) module that converts Polyethylene (HDPE/LDPE) Polypropylene (PP) andPolyamide (Nylon) into RPL.However Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is not being used.We proposeto utilize this PET as feedstock in the production of solid plastic bricks that can be used for lightconstruction.Also alternate utilities will be evaluated to extend the mobility of these Plastic Ocean WasteRecycler modules to a larger number of remote communities.The Objective.The primary objective during Phase I is to design a mobile PET Plastic Ocean WasteRecycler (POWER) module that is capable of locally producing a Recycled Plastic Brick (RPB) productfrom the PET retrieved from the POW and OBP.The Benefits.This approach will result in a POW solution that is local and feasible contributing to reducedlandfill usage increased local jobs increased Plastic Ocean Waste collection increased local plasticsrecycling and reduced impact of plastics on the environment.The Team. The Principal Investigator for the proposed effort has successfully commercialized several SBIRefforts.Assisting PKS will be Triverus Alaska's premier machining engineering and manufacturingcompany.Page 1