Case Study: The Ocean Cleanup accelerates plastic-soup modeling with SURF supercomputing

Computer models in the fight against plastic soup

The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization, faced the challenge of accurately predicting how ocean currents and waves would affect their floating barriers designed to collect plastic waste. Their complex 3D models required immense computing power that was beyond the capacity of a standard PC, significantly slowing down their development process. They sought assistance from the vendor SURF to overcome this hurdle.

SURF provided the solution by granting The Ocean Cleanup access to its Cartesius supercomputer. This service accelerated the development process enormously, allowing the modeling team to run multiple simulations alongside each other and receive results in minutes instead of hours or days. With SURF's support, which also included software installation and maintenance, The Ocean Cleanup was able to set a new standard for accuracy in maritime design and advance more efficiently toward its goal of cleaning the oceans.

The Ocean Cleanup

Bruno Sainte-Rose

Head of Modeling Team