A Pollution Detection System for Plastic Ocean Waste Based on Energy-Harvesting Radio Transmitters

With the constant increase in the usage of plastic bottles in food production, ocean pollution has become a significant problem. The ability to organize in large fields is one of the critical problems nowadays, and their detection for further removal is a challenge. In this study, we propose the idea of equipping some of the plastic bottles on the production lines with simple radio-emitting equipment capable of signaling the presence of plastic bottle fields in the ocean to nearby vessels. The proposed idea is based on ultra-low-power energy harvesting that utilizes inherent wave energy. To assess the performance of the proposed framework, we developed a performance evaluation framework that captures the main specifics of the proposed detection system, including the probability of detecting at least one waste field and all waste fields in a given region. To showcase the potential of the proposed idea in this study, we also demonstrate that ultra-low-power harvesting using ocean waves is feasible. Our numerical results illustrate that for typical environmental parameters, the time range for detecting all waste fields in the area scales from 4–6 h to a few days at most. Additionally, the probability of detecting the presence of waste in the area is 2–3 times higher, potentially allowing for extremely fast detection and timely removal. We emphasize that the proposed system can be used to complement the currently available systems, not to replace them completely.