This Boy Found A Way To Remove Microplastic From Our Oceans And Won Rs 36 Lakh For His Idea

Microplastics are a major pollution problem for us, clogging our oceans and killing the fish, not to mention causing health problems for us too.

Now, a teenager from Ireland may have found a way to fix our growing plastic pollution problem.

Image courtesy: Google Science Fair

Fion Ferreira was walking along the beach in his coastal hometown of Ballydehob when he came across a stone with oil and plastic stuck to it.

It's something the 18-year-old says he's become steadily more aware of in recent years. "I was alarmed to find out how many microplastics enter our wastewater system and consequently the oceans," he wrote in his project entry for the Google Science Fair competition this year. It was that incident that got Ferreira thinking about developing a way to extract microplastics from seawater.

So you know, plastic doesn't decompose the way other materials do. Instead, when constantly exposed to harsh sunlight or water, it breaks down into microscopic particles called microplastics. These are no more than 5mm long, and they can end up entering the bloodstreams of fish, animals, and even humans. It's also the most common kind of trash in our oceans, and is capable of passing through the traditional filtration systems we have in place.

Ferreira however recalled a crucial piece of information. Ferrofluids, which are nontoxic magnetic liquids made up of oil and magnetite, attach to microplastics in the presence of water. So he added oil and magnetite to water and mixed into it a simulation solution of plastic waste in the ocean.

The moment he dipped a magnet into the mix, the ferrofluid stuck to his magnet, bringing with it all the plastic, leaving behind only clear water.

Ferreira completed over 950 tests, and says his method turned out to be 88 percent effective in removing a variety of microplastics from water. For that discovery, Google awarded him the grand prize of $50,000

in educational funding. Now, Ferreira is excitedly awaiting the start of his semester at the University of Groningen's Stratingh Institute for Chemistry in the Netherlands, paid for by the grant.

"I want to encourage others by saying you don't have to test everything in a professional lab," he said. "That's why I built my own equipment."

And hopefully there are other young minds that will take his advice, and solve some of the issue plaguing our planet.