Labs of Latvia shares PurOceans inspirational story
Labs of Latvia recently published an article about the inspirational path of PurOceans Technology.
“150-years-old pollution from oil products lies at the bottom of the aquatorium of the Freeport of Riga. This is a global problem for which the Latvian startup PurOceans Technology offers an unprecedented solution and has just demonstrated several years of work in the Freeport of Riga with great success. The solution is likely to significantly expand the possibilities to clean up the world’s polluted waters.
The PurOceans Technology team includes a Ph.D. in biological sciences, an engineer, and ichthyologists or people who know the underwater world well. Like the authors of many other ideas, they came to Riga thanks to the Commercialization Reactor, an acceleration program that gives science-intensive startups the opportunity to develop. Here they met Roland Grigorjans and Aļona Stepanova, who believed in the idea and joined as business developers. “I like to work with things that benefit the environment, people. That’s what Aļona and I have in common. When we heard about this technology, we met the scientists. They turned out to be extremely nice people with similar views, whose only goal is not just to make money,” says Rolands.
PurOceans Technology is a startup company founded in 2019. It has received investment from the Commercialisation Reactor and ClimateKIC programs, as well as praise from industry and mentors. The team has won the Prototron program, wrote Labs of Latvia. It has also participated in several hackathons, such as the CleanWater Hackaton and Hack DigitalSea’21, Labs of Latvia wrote. It has helped us spread the word and talk to people from different industries and port managers. “After we presented our technology at the Freeport of Riga, those in charge were interested in potential cooperation. They gave us a contaminated site for a pilot project and to demonstrate our technology. And here we are, thanks to Viesturs Zeps and Vilis Avotiņš,” says Rolands.
Pollution to be Recycled
PurOceans Technology’s solution is to non-invasively clean the bottom of aquariums of oil residues, microplastics, chemicals, and other pollutants. It is based on the so-called flotation method, which does not involve the use of chemicals, electrical pulses, or ground excavation, thus minimizing damage to flora and fauna. The method involves placing a funnel on the seabed which, at a certain air pressure, lifts oil pollution from the bed of the aquatorium, separates it from the ground and sand, and collects it in closed tanks without allowing it to spread further into the environment. Rolands explains that the light fraction pollution that is present in the surface water evaporates over time. The heavy fraction, on the other hand, starts to sink. Once it settles, it can be lifted by excavation or electrochemical pulses. Once the oil is lifted with the sand, it cannot be reused.
“With our technology, we lift oil products and microplastics, which are very easy to reuse because it’s clean oil. This means that the customer will pay us to lift the dirt. Meanwhile, the partner who uses them will pay us for the opportunity to recycle the material. This means we don’t pay for disposal like all our competitors, which is expensive,” says Rolands.
He hopes that soon the microplastics collected can be recycled by brands that stand up for responsible stewardship so that they can continue to produce, for example, sports shoes.
No Shortage of Work Anytime Soon
PurOceans Technology will have no shortage of work and its partners will have no shortage of recyclable materials for a long time because oil pollution is a huge problem in the world.
“As long as oil and oil products are used, there will always be a risk of pollution ending up in the water,” says Rolands.
Today’s safety systems do prevent spills occasionally. For example, booms are used when refueling tankers. If a spill occurs, the pollution can be quickly cleaned up. “But anywhere in the world, it is very expensive to dispose of all these collected substances. So, what happens if pollution builds up? It is simply discharged into neutral waters!” Rolands reveals.
Of course, pollution is most dangerous to underwater flora and fauna, but everything in this world is connected and humans also consume a lot of seafood. In many places, the underwater world is a popular tourist attraction. However, when oil ends up on the seabed, it forms a film that prevents fish from accessing food, because fish feed on what is in the ground. In such places, oxygen levels are also greatly reduced. This means that if plankton is covered by a film of oil, oxygen cannot get into the water. In places with low oxygen levels, fish cannot live. They are forced to migrate to places where the climatic conditions are sometimes completely unsuitable for the species to reproduce. The fish die out. Oil is a toxic material, so mutations are also very likely to occur.
Pollution Could Be Fed to Bacteria in the Future
PurOceans Technology looks to the future in the context of three stages of development. The team now has a fully equipped boat that can carry out the clean-up with three people on board. Up to one hectare can be cleaned in 20 days, to a depth of 25 meters. If the customer is interested, a larger prototype can be built that can also work at depths of up to 200 meters. The team is ready to go to the scene and do the cleaning themselves.
The startup has applied for a Norwegian support mechanism to equip the boat with solar cells. At the moment, it is still very much manual work, but in the future, the PurOceans Technology solution will be powered by software that will automatically identify the areas to be cleaned. Now it has to take samples from different locations, add the coordinates, send them to the lab. From this information, the scientist draws conclusions and creates an action plan.
“In the future, it will all be automated. The customer will hire our equipment, which will be driven by his operator, who will only have to enter some data into the system, and the system itself will calculate what needs to be done and how. This way, any port will be able to rent the equipment,” Rolands outlines the development model.
The third stage of development is a bit like science fiction, and it involves microbiology. The company plans to produce genetically modified bacteria, as there are already bacteria that feed on oil, fuel, and microplastics. “Then we could just drop the capsules with the bacteria into the water, which will clean it much faster. If there is nothing more to eat, these bacteria will die. If the bacteria survived in such a situation, there is always the possibility that it would mutate with other bacteria, enter the environment, and cause harm. We do not want that, so it is better not to mess around with these things. We have the possibility of bringing in geneticists who know how to and can modify bacteria, but that requires funding. Once we have a stable cash flow, we will definitely come back to this issue. With such a solution, we could serve thousands of customers worldwide,” says Rolands.”
