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Irish Teenager Wins Global Science Award for Removing Microplastics from Water
- phnofive 7y agoPrevious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600906
- phnofive 7y agoAlso, Fionn Ferreira’s winning fair entry: https://www.googlesciencefair.com/projects/2018/2c3f6207b15f46cb4bb66a56095bd6d901ccfa42e7e51600c766df7856590c4e https://www.googlesciencefair.com/projects/2018/2c3f6207b15f...
- ummonk 7y agoThis seems like it should deserve way more attention than Ocean Cleanup.
- Azrael3000 7y agoIt should not be a competition about anything, instead all the efforts should be supported to solve the plastic issue, from reduction of use to clean-up.
- ummonk 7y agoWhat do you mean "all the efforts"? The global economy is 80 trillion dollars a year. Should all of that be focused on various ocean plastic projects?
- EGreg 7y agoI am awed by the teen and his accomplishments to date. But serious question: how can this be used in vivo, say in the ocean? The magnetite left behind seems toxic also. When I saw it being dropped in the water, I wondered how the fish are going to survive all that. Microplastics that settle to the bottom of the ocean might be collected somehow. The rest are dispersed by ocean currents in a vast, vast volume of water, especially colloidal plastic. How would we have enough magnetite to do any of this? I really hope there can be some plastic-eating bacteria that will break down microplastics and won’t get out of control and create a worse problem https://www.popsci.com/bacteria-enzyme-plastic-waste/ https://www.popsci.com/bacteria-enzyme-plastic-waste/ However we as a society must switch away to biodegrdable plastics! Why haven’t we done this for decades, same as with electric cars? Governments are unwilling to use pigovian taxes and tariffs to subsidize eco-friendly alternatives.
- mikekchar 7y agoI may be wrong, but my impression was that he envisioned this to be used in waste water treatment, rather than in existing environments.
- hoorayimhelping 7y agoThe idea is you treat waste water with this before it goes out to the ocean.
- pcstl 7y agoIt is unclear whether biodegradable plastics break down fully to non-plastic products or whether their breakdown produces microplastics, unfortunately.
- selimthegrim 7y agoI am pretty sure magnetite gets dissolved in the ocean already at some concentration
- wfjkwepofjpw 7y agoI don't want to be dismissive, but I swear this headline like 100 times over the past 10 years. This, and "teen finds bacteria culture to digest plastic waste".
- jagannathtech 7y agoHonestly, almost every one of these 'teen finds...' story are very sensational and clickbaity. Eventually it turns out to be something already known, absolutely cannot scale, way too costly for any practical purpose, nothing related to the headline etc
- whatshisface 7y agoThis one is better than most because what he accomplished is a very good science fair project, and that's what he's being lauded for. The fact that it has some potential to be developed in to a real world solution is just icing on the cake.
- pmoriarty 7y ago"Microplastics or microbeads are mostly used in soaps, shower gels and facial scrubs to exfoliate skin..." So, wait... If we just stopped using microplastics in soaps, shower gels and facial scrubs we'd mostly stop dumping microsplastics in to the environment? But we don't because we'd rather have this totally optional, cosmetic benefit? Humans are so stupid.
- kccqzy 7y agoMicrobeads are already banned in many places. The United States for example banned it back in 2017. But there are many governments that haven't caught up to it yet.
- jhanschoo 7y agoThe article is correct only in the sense that that is the purpose of many manufactured microplastics, and the teenager's quote hints at it: "The method used was most effective on fibres obtained from a washing machine and least effective on polypropylene plastics". I strongly think it's the majority, though I don't have a source, that most microplastics come from wear and other sources. From consumer sources, microplastics come from synthetic fibers and wear from regular plastic products, among others.
- bananasbandanas 7y agoAccording to this [1] source, only about 2% of microplastics are due to cosmetics. The majority are from synthetic textiles (35%) and tyres (28%). [1] https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/2017-002.pdf https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documen...
- carapace 7y agoTangent: I have a hunch that the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube, or something based on it, could be used to separate or just concentrate microplastics from water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube > The vortex tube was used to separate gas mixtures, oxygen and nitrogen, carbon dioxide and helium, carbon dioxide and air in 1967 by Linderstrom-Lang. Vortex tubes also seem to work with liquids to some extent...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jazzyjackson 7y agoLike a constant flow centrifuge, amazing ... but water is not so compressible, will it separate out based on dissolved solids effecting the density of the solution? It could be used to reduce salinity in that case, no? I would think if no ones figured out desalination via vortex, filtering otherwise seems unlikely
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoRemoving dissolved salt is different to removing suspended microplastics though. There's lots of work done already on removing suspended particulates from liquids, eg https://petrowiki.org/Removing_solids_from_water#Desanding_hydroclones https://petrowiki.org/Removing_solids_from_water#Desanding_h... .
- cududa 7y agoIn extremely focused on under ground pumped hydro energy storage using derelict mines as core infrastructure, and I think you just gave me a very big idea. Any interest in discussing this concept?
- carapace 7y agoI'm not an engineer. I doubt I could contribute anything.
- deleted 7y ago
- eaenki 7y agoThe article cites he will go to uni in the Netherlands. Why not MIT/Harvard/Stanford/Oxford/Cambridge?
- JanSt 7y agoWhy not in the Netherlands? They have great universities.
- Dobbs 7y agoThe stereotype goes that the Dutch have forgotten more about hydraulic engineering than other countries have ever known. There is a grain of truth in this. If he wants to continue his current work then the Netherlands is one of the best places. Plus many Europeans don’t want to go to the US. Not for anything more than a vacation. This view has strengthened over the last several years.
- bb101 7y agoDepends if his objective is form a future network of C-suite acquaintances (Harvard, Oxbridge), or to learn science (MIT, Netherlands).
- tempodox 7y ago> At present, no screening or filtering for microplastics takes place in any European wastewater treatment centres. This seems to be a hole that needs plugging. Regulations that prohibit the use of this stuff altogether would be even better.
- kwhitefoot 7y ago> Regulations that prohibit the use of this stuff altogether would be even better A lot of microplastic is from textiles. If you ban all sources of microplastics you'll be back to wearing only wool, cotton, silk, linen, and leather. A lot of the remainder is from plastic single use containers. Instead of banning them they could simply be returned to the shop from which they were bought for recycling as is done for most drinks containers (both plastic and aluminium) here in Norway. Banning plastic bottles would mean a substantial increase in energy use because the alternative is glass which is much heavier and more costly to recycle. Perhaps we could switch to aluminium for more containers. It fashionable now to complain about the deliberately created microplastics like those used in cosmetics but the vast bulk come from wear and tear on what are now effectively traditional materials.
- em-bee 7y ago> If you ban all sources of microplastics you'll be back to wearing only wool, cotton, silk, linen, and leather. what would be wrong with that? i'd be all for it. it's also possible to make plastic containers and bottles reusable.
- _edo 7y agoThis stuck out as strange to me since they defined microplastics as <5mm. If you run water through sand it would filter things this large, and that's a common wastewater treatment practice.
- annogram 7y agoI think it's messed up that soaps shampoos and other items are even allowed to contain micro plastics when we know the damage they cause.
- pvaldes 7y agoMaybe it was the cynical in me, but I wonder why those "teenager will save the world" relates are so popular (but often show so few results at long term). Some awards seem just a way to pose, borrow some good ideas, obtain a photo and a cover page and this is all. Will be interesting to see how this ends
- RomanBob 7y agoBecause in reality the teenager's mental output isn't higher than a random adult engineer. But people just think "amazing" when a teenager does something, because people now have very low expectation for teenagers.
- pvaldes 7y agoThe question then is why aren't more adult engineers in those awards (shrug). Maybe they know better and assure to patent their product/idea/project first to exchange it for a pat in the shoulder and a little gossip exposure to show your mum. Dunno... For this guy the effort investment will be very profitable at least. I'm honestly happy for him (but a litte baffled that they still look for multitask superheros able to play the tuba. Why we would want a girl/guy, able to clean the ocean, spending one single hour of their precious time learning the baby elephant walk instead?). It seems that the number of "don't apply if you are not young" job offers in science is increasing in any case.
- Shaanie 7y agoThe award is only open for kids aged 13 to 18, so it's hardly surprising.
- icebraining 7y ago> they still look for multitask superheros able to play the tuba I don't think the prize takes his tuba skills into account at all. It's just that very driven people take to be driven in their various interests. That said, one reason to prefer tuba-playing ocean cleaners might be to avoid those that will burnout before reaching the goals.
- bb101 7y ago"Ferrier sat his Leaving Certificate exams last month at Schull Community College and is due to attend university in the Netherlands. The teenager works as a curator at the Schull Planetarium, has won 12 science fair awards, speaks three languages fluently, plays the trumpet at orchestra level, and had a minor planet named after him by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory." Anyone else feeling somewhat inadequate in comparison?
- secfirstmd 7y agoAs an Irish person, I feel both proud of his work and saddened by the fact that our own university research system is so lacking he has to move abroad.
- coldtea 7y agoWell, don't take it bad. Ireland has like 5 million people? How would it have/support an adequate university research system to support a top-tier talent?
- notfashion 7y agoIreland's per capita level of funding for research has been lagging badly behind the European average, though. It's really a cultural problem: R&D doesn't happen here, except in rare cases. It's not really down to the size of the population: in the 19th C we had Hamilton and Boole, the world's largest telescope in Birr, Grubb telescope manufacturing in Dublin, and the Titanic was built in Belfast in the early 20th C. But independence, for better or worse, saw the Republic kind of divesting itself of technological stuff—it didn't match the national image, and separating from the UK meant that the communication and exchange of technical knowledge became an exception rather than the norm. So it even has to do with the protestant/catholic divide (science and manufacturing was something "they" did). It's a very painful story, and a lot of Irish tech people have a chip on their shoulder (narcissistic injury) because of our backwardness.
- secfirstmd 7y ago
- Yuval_Halevi 7y agoYoung entrepreneurship at its best
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoSure, but why? What harm do these things do? I know, lots of articles are published that cite one another. But none of them have any actual harm documented. They just vaguely refer to one another with "It's well-known that these things are harmful" and then cite another article that says the same thing. It reminds me of 'solar roads', another hyped-up internet sensation based on nothing.
- mattigames 7y agoEverything that exists on Earth such as oceans, jungles and all animals took millions of years to develop without having microplastics inside of them, to even suggest they are not harmful would requiere extremely strong evidence to prove such an external interference on such delicate equilibrium inside bodies does absolutely nothing. And by the way many articles do not cite each other and have original research on the subject: https://www.ecowatch.com/microplastics-hurt-earthworms-too-2640319867.html https://www.ecowatch.com/microplastics-hurt-earthworms-too-2...
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoOne study, then. And that earthworm citation again! One tiny, tiny study of half a dozen flower pots doesn't seem to warrant global furor. And the study returned mixed results, with some earthworms apparently helped by microplastics. There's sand of every size, everywhere. To show another kind of sand is of importance requires some evidence.
- stefap2 7y agoEvidence suggests microplastics in water pose ‘minimal health risk’ (bbc.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20766496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20766496
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoRight: "The WHO says the evidence suggests that all larger plastic particles, and most of the smaller ones, simply pass through the body without being absorbed at all"
- choonway 7y agothe system tries to breed heroes, but that's not how they're made.
- luord 7y agoBright kid. If he's going to study something related to hydraulic engineering, he'll very likely accomplish good things along this line.