The COVID-19 pandemic offered an unprecedented opportunity to look at changes in the Earth system in response to reduced human activity. Your challenge is to develop tools to better understand changes in the interconnected Earth system as seen through the EO Dashboard.
Our project’s main subject is water pollution’s effect on global warming. In this subject we decided to concentrate on micro-plastics' role in water pollution.We learned that one of the biggest output source of micro-plastics is washing machines and we decided to solve this washing machine thing. After some researches we developed a product named ‘’Microno’’.Microno is basically a filter which could be installed to the washing machine that makes water purificated from any type of dirt and micro-plastics.Microno makes the water clean that goes directly to seas and oceans.At the end by the help of Microno we can do something for nature and especially our water that makes %70 of our World!
We developed a filter purificates water named Microno. Microno has a membrane filter inside and there are 0.2 micrometer in diameter holes on this filter. Dirty water goes through this filter and by these holes it becames dirt and micro-plastic free and it comes through Microno clean. There are basically three parts in our product. First part is the propeller part. There is a 12 Volt DC motor in this part and this motor makes our propeller turn. By the help of our motor the propeller increases speed of water. Second part is the part where membrane filter. There are 0.2 micrometer in diameter holes on our filter so that the dirty water goes through there could come out clean and micro-plastic free. Lastly there is a part that increases speed of water again and micro-plastic and dirt free water comes out from that part. Microno can be used by installing in to washing machines. Our system can be used for new machines and also existing/old machines. During the assembly phase, the drainpipe will be cut and one end will be connected to the inlet end and the other end to the outlet end. (We developed Microno’s this version spesifically for washing machines.) Microno is important for seas and oceans to be micro-plastic free. As we mentioned above every time we wash our clothes, micro-plastics go through the washing machine and mixes into the sewer. And after sewer, these micro-plastic go directly into seas/oceans and other places with water. This makes our water so much dirtier because as you know, micro-plastics are more and more dangerous than normal plastics. But if we use Microno in our washing machines, the water that goes to the sewer and seas/oceans could be clean and micro-plastic free. And that’s our main goal; the seas, oceans and water to be clean and when they become clean, global warming to end. In the place with parentheses we talked about why water pollution effects global warming.(And also we learned that most of the world's oxygen production comes from the phytoplanktons in the oceans. Microplastics reduce the photosynthetic ability of phytoplanktons in a huge way. As this situation disrupts the carbon cycle in the world, it is predicted that the amount of oxygen will decrease and it will be a threat to all living creatures. Microplastics feed zooplankton, zooplankton eat phytoplankton and animals eat phytoplankton. In this case, sea creatures eat microplastics indirectly, and we eat sea creatures that eat microplastics. In addition, this situation causes a decrease in phytoplankton. As you know, there is a constant sinking in the sea and this is called sea snow, but microplastics prevent the sea snow from sinking to the bottom and this indirectly affects the bottom life and causes death.)
We were inspired by the ‘’7th Continent’’ while developing our project. Based on our researches there is an seventh continent that is a third of the size of the United States but completely uninhabited. And for good reason, since it consists of an accumulation of plastic waste in the oceans. This plastic continent made us realize that we have to do something for nature, and especially for water, which makes %70 of our World. We designed Microno by using Solid Works and Paint. Most of the designing process, we used Solid Works 3D and we tried to keep our model basic and understandable as much as possible. We didn’t use any type of code. In these thinking,developing and designing processes our team had so many achievements and problems like every team. If we need to explain, we had some problems in the designing process while choosing the design of Microno and making our thoughts happen. We didn’t know some of the parts in Solid Works and we had to learn them from scratch. In the ‘’achievements part’’ we are very happy by the product that we designed and we think we really reflect our purpose by this product. And also we are very happy to have a chance to introduce it to experts. At the end, we surely learned and experienced so many new things. This Hackathon brought us so many new ideas and gave us a great experience.
Our team used space agency data especially while looking at the chlorophyll-a amounts and how did they change during time. Because of our main subject -micro-plastics, how they effect water pollution and water pollution’s effect on global warming- we decided to do a research on chlorophyll-a amounts’ change during time. We used France/Rhone Delta as our base. And as time track we used before covid, during covid(lockdown), after covid. Based on our researches on EO Dashboard, we saw that the micro-plastic and chlorophyll-a amount is much more than it should be before covid. And after that we looked at the lockdown datas. During lockdown, we saw that the amount of micro- plastics and chlorophyll-a were significantly decreased. After covid these amounts increased again. Here we draw the following conclusion; When the factories opened and human activities started again, waste and dirty materials’ amount increased so that chlorophyll-a and micro-plastic amounts increased too. We connected our researches with these datas and at the end Microno came out. The other important spce agency data we used that effected our project so much are ESA Copernicus Access Hub, JAXA Today’s Earth, NASA EOSDIS Worldview, NASA Planet. These data helped us so much through our research process and while defining our main goal.
https://www.canva.com/design/DAEiq6BYdxw/sGSCAgVcltdDz7hqYsQghA/view?utm_content=DAEiq6BYdxw&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton
Our project can show how the microplastic rate affects water pollution by adding the change in the microplastic rate in the seas and oceans to the dashboard. This could happen by developing an app about our product that shows the statistics about micro-plastic amount in the seas/oceans and other water sources.This could be really helpful to measure the change in water pollution and how it affects global warming.
#precipitation #humanactivity #earthsystem #mobility #landcover #NASA #ESA #JAXA #amalhawks #istanbul #Turkey #plastic #globalwarming #microplastics
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.