Could a Seawater Battery Help End our Dependence on Lithium?
December 9, 2016 | ACSEstimated reading time: 1 minute
With the ubiquity of lithium-ion batteries in smartphones and other rechargeable devices, it’s hard to imagine replacing them. But the rising price of lithium has spurred a search for alternatives. One up-and-coming battery technology uses abundant, readily available seawater. Now, making this option viable is one step closer with a new report on a sodium-air, seawater battery. The study appears in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
Sodium-air — or sodium-oxygen — batteries are considered one of the most promising, and cost-effective alternatives to today’s lithium-ion standby. But some challenges remain before they can become a commercial reality. Soo Min Hwang, Youngsik Kim and colleagues have been tackling these challenges, using seawater as the catholyte — an electrolyte and cathode combined. In batteries, the electrolyte is the component that allows an electrical charge to flow between the cathode and anode. A constant flow of seawater into and out of the battery provides the sodium ions and water responsible for producing a charge. The reactions have been sluggish, however, so the researchers wanted to find a way to speed them up.
For their new battery, the team prepared a catalyst using porous cobalt manganese oxide nanoparticles. The pores create a large surface area for encouraging the electrochemical reactions needed to produce a charge. A hard carbon electrode served as the anode. The resulting battery performed efficiently over 100 cycles with an average discharge voltage of about 2.7 volts. This doesn’t yet measure up to a lithium-ion cell, which can reach 3.6 to 4.0 volts, but the advance is getting close to bridging the gap, the researchers say.
Suggested Items
The Right Approach: I Hear the Train A Comin'
04/25/2024 | Steve Williams -- Column: The Right ApproachTraining is often an afterthought in many organizations, and the longer a company has been in business, the more this seems to apply. Over the past couple of decades, it has been amazing to observe that the biggest offenders of this are the companies that overuse the sound bite, “Our most important assets are our people.” When you dig into the process and peel back the onion, their commitment to training is not commensurate with that statement.
Big Win for Defense Production Act Budget Allocation in FY24 Budget
04/23/2024 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamOne year ago, President Biden issued a determination that chips and packaging are critical for national security. Since that time, much work has been done to continue the conversation in Washington, elevating the importance of the entire chips value chain, and including printed circuit boards and substrates, without which chips cannot operate.
IDTechEx Examines the Opportunities for Wearables in Digital Health
04/19/2024 | IDTechExIDTechEx’s report, “Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence 2024-2034: Trends, Opportunities, and Outlook”, covers this ongoing trend in the consumer health wearables market and includes analysis of the opportunities and roadmap for biometric monitoring.
NCAB Appoints Tim Benjamin as New CFO
04/15/2024 | NCAB GroupNCAB Group has appointed Tim Benjamin as its new CFO. Tim has a long and broad experience of managerial business finance roles, including M&A and IT.
Plastronics and the New IPC Guidelines for In-mold Electronics (IME)
04/11/2024 | Barry Matties, I-Connect007In the ever-evolving world of electronics, the roads for the integration of electronics assemblies into 3D structures continue to grow into a set of technologies used to produce 3D plastronics parts and revolutionize mainly the automotive industry. IPC has been developing standards for this set of technologies, led by Francisco Fourcade, IPC electronics technology standards manager.