Back to results
US 12,116,972 B2Granted
Wave-powered towing apparatus
AssigneeJospa Limited
InventorsJocelyn Raymond Fitzsimons, Patrick Joseph Duffy, Cyril Kerr
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Loading patent…
Loading patent…
AssigneeJospa Limited
InventorsJocelyn Raymond Fitzsimons, Patrick Joseph Duffy, Cyril Kerr
Estimating the term…
A towing apparatus has a spine with multiple generally parallel spine members extending in a longitudinal direction and having a length of at least 100 m, and with a leading end and a trailing end. A series of blades are mounted to the spine by couplers which allow the blade to rotate about an axis substantially transverse to the longitudinal direction, each blade having a first surface facing generally in the trailing end direction and a second surface facing generally in the leading end direction. Restraints prevent rotation of each blade by more than a pre-set amount towards the leading end, so that impingement of a wave on the first surface applies a force to the apparatus in the leading end direction. A pair of the towing apparatus' may be arranged to connect to a floating collector with a beach shape to collect floating debris on the sea surface, ridges helping to retain the debris on the slope until it is washed up into a channel.
A wave-powered towing apparatus comprising:
A collection apparatus for gathering floating debris from the sea surface, the collection apparatus comprising at least two wave-powered towing apparatuses linked to a gathering debris collector so that the at least two wave-powered towing apparatuses and the gathering debris collector form a C-shape in plan view, wherein the gathering debris collector is sloped upwardly from a leading end rearwardly, and comprises a debris-collection volume at a trailing end, wherein the gathering debris collector forms a leading mouth with a width in a range of 20 m to 200 m, and the gathering debris collector comprising protrusions on a slope for preventing fallback of debris, at least some of the protrusions being of increasing height in a trailing direction, and the protrusions including one or more ridges and strands of material anchored on a guide body.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.