I suspect a gullible investor money grab: "Saudi riches while saving cute animals, you'd be a fool not to try!", there will always be some people ignoring the too good to be true test.

But if it does work, creating some fuel while doing the cleanup could make a world of difference in terms of funding. I don't see this ever really competing with conventional resource extraction while there is still a drop of crude in the ground, but as a trophy token, "plastic patch fuel" could make fundraising much easier.

Every day, we are putting tons of waste into the ocean. With better recycling/avoidance programs, we may reduce that by 20%, greatly reducing the amount of waste we put into the ocean each year. I don't know the details of this tech, but it could remove far less than that same 20% reduction.