Manta

During his sailing sessions and regattas, Yves Bourgon, a French ocean adventurer, noticed that as more time passed, the more floating objects he observed in the seas and oceans. This is how he and his team came up with the idea of developing a large plastic eating catamaran, powered by the force of the wind to clean our oceans. This vessel will collect all the rubbish in its path and transform it into fuel, which will be used to power the boat forward, to collect even more waste.

The Manta will be a large 56 metre length catamaran, equipped with two 1,500m2 DynaRigs, by Southern Spars, and electric motors for propulsion. These motors allow low speed manoeuvring for sensitive operations such as waste collection, which is carried out at 2 to 3 knots. They have chosen the DynaRig solution for their Sea Cleaner solution since it is a mature technology which has already proven its ability to provide a 100% wind powered, reliable, simple to use, safe and efficient way of travelling the seas and the oceans.

The Manta will be both agile and energy efficient and will be able to reach up to 12 knots. It will be able to operate autonomously for 75% of the time thanks to the 500kW of renewable energy generated on board from the two installed wind turbines, 500m2 of solar panels, two under-board hydro generators and the Waste to Energy Conversion Unit (WECU). All these technologies minimize the ecological impact of the vessel.

The Manta will be able to collect floating macro-waste and smaller pieces of debris from 10 millimetres and up to one metre deep, thanks to the technology on board. The boat is equipped with a waste sorting unit, which manually separates the waste according to its type, another unit then converts the collected waste into electricity through the pyrolysis process, which powers all the Manta's electrical equipment. This method emits virtually no CO2 nor air pollutants. Experts estimate that the vessel will be able to collect between 1 and 3 tonnes of waste per hour, aiming to collect 5 to 10,000 tonnes per year.

It is planned that the manta will operate in Asia, Africa and South America, in areas where pollution is very high and dense. The experts also aim to send the vessel to areas that have been the scene of natural or ecological disasters and where the concentration of waste in the sea would therefore be much higher than usual.

The teams estimate that the ships should be in service by the end of 2024.