Amsterdam tries ‘bubble barrier’ to save canals

Advanced Search

The story appears on

Page A11

December 18, 2019

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Amsterdam tries ‘bubble barrier’ to save canals

Source: Agencies | 00:00 UTC+8 December 18, 2019 |

Print Edition

Amsterdam is trying out a “bubble barrier” to help remove plastic from the city’s canals by capturing trash hidden beneath the surface of the water.

While the project launched in November is just a small-scale test right now, the non-profit group behind it hopes it could be deployed elsewhere, if successful.

A bubble barrier is basically a tube that we place on the bottom of the river or canal, that has holes in it and we press air through it; that creates a bubble curtain,” said Francis Zoet, the Great Bubble Barrier project’s technical director.

Because the tube lies diagonally across the canal, the bubbles work with the flow of water in the canal to float the waste and then shuttle it into a collector on the side.

Bubbles do not interfere with passing boats and do not pose a major obstacle for fish or birds.

While Amsterdam already has four boats that collect around 42,000 kilograms of plastic a year, the boats can only pick up the rubbish on the surface and some smaller pieces are missed altogether.

“What people don’t realize is that every piece of plastic which falls into the water in the canals is eventually flowing out to the North Sea. We want to prevent that,” said Roy Leysner of Waternet, part of the local water authority which is funding the project together the City of Amsterdam.

Rivers are a major conduit of plastic pollution into the world’s oceans, carrying up to 4 million tons of plastic to the sea each year, according to estimates by the Hemholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany.

A second Dutch non-profit has also launched a system to collect surface river trash using floating barriers.

Zoet said the two concepts are complementary.

World

About Us
|
Terms of Use
|
RSS
|
Privacy Policy
|
Contact Us
|
Shanghai Call Center: 962288
|
Tip-off hotline: 52920043

沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
|
互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
|
网络视听许可证：0909346
|
广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
|
增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012

Amsterdam tries ‘bubble barrier’ to save canals

Email this to your friend