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Microplastics that are not rotten or decomposed and are difficult to filter because of their small size are in the sea and rivers as well as in the water we drink.
Korean researchers have developed a water drone that effectively removes microplastics floating in the water from the sea, rivers, and lakes.
Reporter Lim Null-sol covered it.
[Reporter]
The area around the Bukhangang River in Yangpyeong-gun, Gyeonggi-do.
The water drone floats on the water and moves around.
It is a water drone developed by domestic researchers that filters microplastics in the water.
The water looks clean, but microplastics are hidden everywhere.
Water drones float on the river for up to five hours, cleaning up large debris to invisible microplastics.
The secret is in the water-friendly 'hydrophilic serrated structure'.
The sawtooth wheel turns to create a water curtain between the wheels, which is accompanied by microplastics.
Water-friendly cogs drain water down and leave microplastics between the cogs to filter it out.
This allows you to clean up microplastics of various sizes from 1 μm (micrometer) to up to 4 mm size at once.
[Kim Sung-jin / Senior Researcher at KIST Extreme Materials Research Center: (This technology) is a method of recovering by attaching microplastics to a water membrane sandwiched between teeth. After collecting it, when you go to the other side, you take it off again by the flow of water between the buoyancy and the teeth.]
It also features that the water drone does not have a filter.
There is no filter clogging, so stable removal is possible even if it operates for a long time.
The researchers succeeded in removing various types of microplastics in real time in large spaces such as the sea, rivers, and lakes, with a recovery rate of more than 80%.
[Myeong-woon / KIST Extreme Materials Research Center Lead researcher: Water drones can be used to rescue people or recover dangerous objects because they also recover trash well on the water and operate stably on the water]
Microplastics that are easily detected in rivers, lakes, and seas, as well as in tap water and bottled water.
The water drone developed this time is expected to exceed the limits of the existing fixed purification system as it can move freely in open spaces and remove microplastics.
I'm YTN Science Lim Neul-sol.
Image recording: Hwang Yu-min
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