Microplastics and Me

Anna Du is a student in Massachusetts. Her interest in saving the ocean from plastics pollution helped her place first in her state science and engineering fair, become a nationally recognized Broadcom MASTERS semifinalist, and win scholarships. Anna’s work over the past few years, has evolved substantially in both complexity and scope. Following up with her internationally recognized, and award winning work on microplastics for the past 4 years, she has been trying to solve two major problems encountered during her previous phases of research on how to identify, collect, and eliminate microplastics from the ocean. However, she encountered major issues with how to continously power an autonomous underwater vehicle for extended periods of research, and what to do with the plastics that were found, since there is no way to recycle bio-contaminated plastics such as the ones found on the ocean floor.

So, she proceeded to study various means of converting biofouled plastics into useful carbon materials such as graphene, diamond and nanotubes — and she researched how to do so, using an advanced form of pyrolysis (a means of turning plastic back into usable fuel or other materials). Using the byproduct from this process as one potential source of feedstock, Anna theorized a new patent-pending process to create a stack of diamond-like materials, in conjunction with waste nuclear fuel, to make a new photo-thermo-betavoltaic device, capable of producing highly efficient renewable energy, in remote environments such as space, extreme climates, oceanic applications and more. Her device not only produces renewable energy in locations that are otherwise difficult to produce reliable energy, but helps in reducing both nuclear and plastic waste. Realizing the importance of her invention, she filed a patent, and intends to use these technologies to help the world meet its carbon emission net-zero goals in the coming years. Her success has been documented in newspapers, magazines, and national television programs.

Anna’s latest bio and achievements can be found at: www.annadu.org and deepplastics.org/  See her Tumbleocity workshop linked here.   And see her book trailer linked here.   Learn more about microplastics in this cool video by Anna.