OCEAN PHOENIX PROJECT

 

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OCEAN PHOENIX 360: Is a trimaran or triple hulled leviathan that eats diesel or LNG to seek and suck up plastic waste from our oceans. Serge Menard suggests that 40 of these giant tankers might clean up the oceans. This is a larger version of Yvan Bourgon's Manta sea cleaners, save that the smaller ship is sail and wind turbine powered.

 

 

The OCEAN PHOENIX 360 is a concept for a giant factory-ship said by the designer to be capable of eradicating the millions of tons of plastic waste that have accumulated in the North Pacific and other Oceans around the world.

 

Propulsion is to be diesel-electric / LNG or hydrogen, which the designer says will allow an optimal reduction of emissions of sulfur and carbon. Though the cost of diesel, LNG or hydrogen as burned fuel has to be added to the operational cost of the vessel, potentially adding a financial impediment compared to Boyan Slat's booms that use ocean currents as the transport medium.

 

 

 

 

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION

 

>> 360m in Length (393 Yd)

>> 115m in Width (125 Yd) - (roughly the width of two supertankers side by side)

>> Draft length 30m (38 Yd) - (this can be reduced to 16m / 17 Yd by de-ballasting)

 

OCEAN PHOENIX 360 claims to be capable of retrieving, compressing, and packing waste in accordance with road transportation regulations, this taking place before the transferal of the payload to an accompanying support ship that will take it onshore for recycling.

 

The specification is not yet cast in stone, with the designer suggesting subsequent outfitting with 'SWATH' hulls. In a patent-protected variant. Apparently, the ship can be of single-hull design or a multihull design. We would have said that a SWATH hull was impractical for what is after all a cargo vessel, where the displacement has to change markedly as the holds fill with plastic.

The designer claims that the vessel is capable of filtering a layer of water up to 30 meters deep and 100 meters (328 ft.) wide at twelve knot speeds. No detail of the filtering mechanism is given.

A high level of autonomy is claimed to allow 24/7 operation in the most severe weather conditions. 

 

 

 

 

NIAGARA FALLS

 

The designer invites comparison of the ship's processing capabilities as the volume of water that enters its tank to that of Niagara Falls. An astounding treatment volume of 16,500 m³ per second is claimed. Hence, the Ocean Phoenix is claimed to have an output 2.8 times greater than Niagara Falls during its peak season.

 

The Ocean Phoenix 360 is said to be capable of handling shipping containers, multi-ton logs (occasionally found where currents converge), plastic waste (and other forms of debris) and micro-plastics, practically the size of plankton.

Recent studies have emphasized the harm inflicted upon marine environments and their fauna because of plankton intermixing with micro-plastics. Common sense compels us to eliminate this waste. The Phoenix team say they will defer to the official recommendations of scientists and researchers and calibrate their filtration systems in accordance with their guidelines. The problem with this being that scientists have not yet published such data or recommendations. For example, for the SeaVax project, a team is conducting dedicated research as part of an integrated approach to their ocean cleaning formula, including data collection, object recognition and other means of identification to differentiate between ocean waste and bio mass.

 

 

 

 

HOW MANY SHIPS? 

 

Recent studies indicate that the North Pacific layers range from 1.4 to 3.4 million square kilometers. The Phoenix project claims that a fleet of 20 ships could treat an area of roughly 3 million square kilometers in 10 years, or more with supplemental ships, depending on the total area of the waste layers. The treatment of the total surface area of the planet’s ocean plastic waste will likely require a fleet estimated at 40 Ocean Phoenix vessels.

OCEAN PHOENIX 360 is presented by the designer as being a realistic and viable solution: a hybrid factory-ship ready to meet the greatest environmental challenge of our time.

Preliminary analysis has been carried out by 'The Offshore Partners', a naval study bureau based in the Netherlands. Their conclusions as to the feasibility of the vessel and its equipment is reproduced here from where you might agree that the building of such a ship is feasible:

 

 

Ocean Phoenix Project
Nice, France
Attn. Serge Menard

The Offshore Partners B.V.
Sluisjesdijk 155
3087 AG Rotterdam
The Netherlands
Tel.: +31 (0)10 - 4914131
Fax: +31 (0X0 - 4914139

Date: 2Oth May, 2016
Project No: 16483
Name: Ocean Phoenix
Document No: Rec.l80516GH
Subject: Endorsement

Dear Mr. Menard,

With reference to our detailed communication over the past few months, our meeting in Nice and our subsequent detailed involvement into the feasibility of the Ocean Phoenix project, we would like to relay the following:

The Offshore Partners, a company based in the Netherlands, with a wealth of experience in shipbuilding projects, considers the Ocean Phoenix Project to be a commendable and unique opportunity to build a vessel capable of partially eradicating a major ecological problem, which the world is gradually coming to understand is of such a grand scale, that action needs to be taken immediately.

Our engineers were tasked with evaluating if such a large and complex vessel is technically feasible, to which after careful consideration they responded positively, that a ship measuring approximately 360 metres x 115 metres with an operational draft of 30 metres and designed as a trimaran, would prove to be a innovative and attainable challenge. There are several shipyards around the world who would have the capacity and technical ability to build such a large vessel.

 

The patented idea behind the mission equipment, necessary to plough the seas and retrieve the plastic debris will be applied and further developed, parallel to the design phases of the vessel and is seen as an integral factor towards the success of the project.

The Offshore Partners supports both the construction of the vessel, together with its mission equipment and the philosophy behind the idea to build such a large vessel, that enables a radical approach to removing large quantities of plastic debris from the world's precious oceans. lt will require substantial efforts from varying parties worldwide to finance this hugely important project, however in the long term it will be a small price to pay, in order to avoid having more plastic waste than fish in our oceans, in the foreseeable future.

 

We wísh you every success in securing the financial funding necessary, in order that we can continue with the Ocean Phoenix Project and look forward to eventually seeing the vessel completed and operational.

 

Best regards,

 

Graham Hardie (Global Business Manager)        Josso van Boxtel           Djeck Bogaarts (Engineeri Manager)



That takes care of the floating hull, with development of the water filtration equipment to be incorporated into the 360 or even 120 designs as a when it be available.

This initiative is said to be a challenge of colossal proportions, but the designer's preliminary calculations suggest that the considerable costs involved in building such a large vessel, could be lower than most experts predict and may be staggered over a period of at least ten years.

 

 

 

 

PHOENIX CONTACTS

 

SAS OCEAN PHOENIX
455 Promenade des Anglais
Porte de l’Arenas 
Hall C - CS 13326
06206 Nice Cedex 3
France

 

Tel: +33 675 662 687
Fax: +33 489 830 112

COMPANY REGISTRATION: 815 107 552 - NICE (FRANCE)

 

 

 

 

LINKS & REFERENCE

 

http://www.theoffshorepartners.com/

https://www.oceanphoenixproject.com/mission

 

 

 

MANTA: Is a multihull designed to carry three conveyor belts to lift macro plastic into an onboard processing facility. Power comes from four wing sails, two darrieus wind turbines and two thousand square meters of solar panels.

 

 

 This website is provided on a free basis as a public information service. copyright © Cleaner Oceans Foundation Ltd (COFL) (Company No: 4674774) 2018. Solar Studios, BN271RF, United Kingdom. COFL is a charity without share capital. The names AmphiMax™, RiverVax™ and SeaVax™ are trade  names used under license by COF in connection with their 'Feed The World' ocean cleaning sustainability campaign.

 

 

 

 

PHOENIX OCEAN PLASTIC CLEANUP SHIP PROJECTS 360 and 120