Rabat – In 2020, Moroccan innovator Aymane Berrerhdoche and his Spanish flatmate, Cecilio Rodriguez Grau, partnered with the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, to co-develop Proluo, a micro- and macro-plastic sea water filter non-profit project.
Explaining the concept to Morocco World News (MWN), Berrerhdoche said, “The filters we are developing have an innovative approach which is how to make them passive, by sticking them to boats that already move through the Mediterranean, that way we decrease their cost instead of making very expensive filters.”
Proluo or filtration in Latin made Berrehdoche the first Moroccan and foreigner in Spain to co-found a technology-related project in partnership with Polytechnic of Valencia.
Alongside the two co-founders, Berrehdoche and Grau, the project gathers today 31 members from all branches of engineering and science at the Spanish university. The team has developed six designs and two prototypes for plastic filters.
As the Proluo team grew, the project has attracted more investment. “We have now €10,000 of investment but we forecast a €100,000 total investment in the next 3 to 4 years,” Berrehdoche told MWN.
“We are now testing the prototypes in our simulator area that we created in our workshop, and the plan is to approve the prototypes to start creating more of them while we are gaining more investment,” he added.
Following the testing phase and the approval of the filters, Proluo seeks to build its own recycling system to recycle captured micro-and macro-plastics from the Mediterranean “and therefore close the cycle,” the co-founder noted.
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Born in Nador, the Chief Executive of Proluo started his journey in his hometown where he designed his first water filter after noticing the tap water turning yellow. He then joined the INJAZ Al Maghrib program dedicated to supporting young Moroccan entrepreneurs and innovators.
“I then participated in a competition created by JA Worldwide which is the mother organization of INJAZ Al-Maghrib on the international scale,” he explained.
The small-scale tap-water filter has gradually developed into Proluo with the hope of creating a “positive outcome in communities” across the Mediterranean, by addressing the serious issue of microplastics which damages the maritime ecosystem and can cause cancer to people if they consume seafood that feeds on them.
While Proluo filters can capture micro-and macro-plastics thanks to their ability to stick to boats allowing filtering operations at a large scale, plastic pollution remains a prominent hurdle for the preservation of maritime life.
To address the issue, Proluo seeks to raise awareness about the danger of microplastics, urging the public to cut the use of one-use plastics to reduce plastic pollution.
