Do Recycling of Fishing Nets to Keep a Clean Ocean

The problem of marine plastic waste has become a global focus and is a significant problem for marine life and the ecological environment.

Among all marine plastic waste, various types of discarded fishing nets and fishing tools account for nearly half of the total. Fishing nets abandoned in the ocean damage the marine ecological environment and became an underwater killer of marine life. Institutions, governments, and non-profit organizations worldwide are looking for solutions to reduce fishing nets entering the sea. Diving and salvage operations have also taught fishermen the importance of recycling fishing nets to save the marine environment.

Recycling waste fishing nets is an excellent way to solve the marine plastic waste problem. However, due to the uniqueness of fishing nets, there are still specific difficulties to breakthroughs in recycling.

1. There are many types of fishing nets, and each recovered fishing net may have a significant difference in weight, ranging from kilograms to tons. It isn't easy to miniaturize it;

2. The recovered fishing nets contain a lot of sand and fish bones, which are challenging to wash and separate impurities;

3. There is not a single material fishing net on the market. There may be multiple materials in a fishing net, mainly floating materials PE\PP and sinking materials PA\PET, resulting in materials with similar densities. The separation effect of floating and semi-sinking material is not good, and it cannot be separated;

4. Fishing nets are mostly monofilament, and the crushed monofilament fishing nets are smaller, which will cause great loss if the separation method is not correct;

5. After washing, the water content of the fishing net is high;

6. The crushed fishing net is relatively small, and easy to block the net during the granulation;

7. After the fishing net is cleaned, the precision of the granulation filter is not high, and it cannot meet its quality requirements for downstream applications of high-grade ECO filaments;

The BoReTech fishing net recycling process can effectively solve several recycling difficulties. Various recycling processes are developed for different fishing nets, mainly based on PP, PE and, PA, PET.

1. The wide chain conveyor is used to feed the material, and it is equipped with a single-shaft shredder, which effectively solves the fishing nets' pre-shredding problem with large weight differences and different sizes;

2. The pre-crushed fishing net is transported to the rinsing machine, and the fishing net is effectively dispersed through a specially designed structure; at the same time, the sand, fish bones, and other sinking substances are effectively separated from the PP and PE;

3. In the discharge section of the rinsing, a lifting filter is equipped, which has the functions of cleaning PP, PE, and preliminary drying;

4. Secondary crushing the monofilament of the fishing net;

5. For the PA and PET fishing net washing, three additional high-speed hot washing machines are equipped for deep cleaning to solve the problem that the granulation section is easy to block the net, and a closed-loop hot washing water circulation system is configured to save energy consumption;

6. Continuously pass through different kinds of rinsing tanks, fully spread and rinse the fishing nets, and completely separate the impurities, and the latter is equipped with a dewatering machine to dehydrate and squeeze the materials;

7. The pipeline drying system is adopted to fully heat and dry the cleaned monofilament of the fishing net, separate the air, and reduce the moisture content to below 8% to meet the requirements of granulation;

8. The granulation process adopts the compaction and cutting chamber. After pre-agglomeration, it enters the double-station vacuumed screw, and is equipped with a 50-60 mesh self-cleaning filter, enters the sub-screw, and is equipped with a 320/400 mesh filter, which produces high-grade pellets suitable for filaments;

The social and economic value of fishing net recycling and future development.

Fishing nets exist in the oceans and rivers, which have threatened the survival of aquatic organisms and caused damage to the ecological environment. The earth is the environment in which human beings live. It is our duty to purify water, rivers, and seas.

Compared with the simple reuse of waste fishing nets, the fishing nets are recycled, washed, granulated, given a second life, and regenerated into more consumer products. At the same time, more recycled fishing tools can be reused, and the fishery can effectively develop economically. For example, Bureo, a company registered in California, USA, uses recycled fishing nets to make outdoor products, such as surfboards, skateboards, sunglasses, toys, etc. Humanscale produces an office chair; each chair has nearly approx. 1kg of recycled fishing net. Nylon producer Aquail uses recycled fishing nets to make textiles such as carpets…