Power at sea: Towards high-performance seawater batteries

 

Charlotte Black

Mr. Ippolito

Chemistry, C Even

2/9/22

 

National Korea Maritime and Ocean University. “Power at sea: Towards high-performance seawater batteries” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 31 January 2022. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220131153302.htm.

 

The central idea of the article, “Power at sea: Towards high-performance seawater batteries”, by National Korea Maritime and Ocean University, is that Lithium-ion batteries are extremely useful, but are scarce and expensive, so to make up for this, scientists have begun looking into seawater batteries which are sodium-based. The seawater batteries alone aren’t perfect as making them high-quality isn’t cheap, and ultimately, carbon based batteries are better priced, but they need to be “co-doped”, or tuned, with other materials and this process is difficult and even threatening. A solution to this problem is a procedure made by a scientific panel from Korea Maritime and Ocean University led by Associate Professor Jun Kang, called ‘plasma in liquid’. In such a procedure, a combination of carbon, Nitrogen, and Sulfur and plasma is put into a solution. The result is an efficient source of energy that is inflammable, environmentally friendly, and cannot be damaged by seawater.

This discovery can improve society in multiple ways including providing more efficient and environmentally friendly energy options, as the battery is sodium based, as well as creating an energy source that can be used underwater. As the state of the environment worsens, seawater batteries offer a safe and environmentally friendly source of power that can be critical to helping the well being of our planet. Additionally, since it can be used underwater, it can supply power to nuclear power plants in the event of an emergency. It can also provide power to salvage equipment on passenger ships, essentially saving lives. 

            This article is overall well written and did a good job of going into the benefits of seawater batteries. For example, they made the benefit for using the battery at sea very clear although they could have gone more into the benefits that it has on the environment since it had mentioned that there were. The article also did a good job of describing why SWB’s are a better option opposed to Lithium-ion batteries. The article also cites a paper from a panel of scientists and mentions them in their article when talking about how the SWB’s were altered, which helps demonstrate the source's reliability. Although it was a well written article, some aspects of it could have been better. For example, I don’t feel as though they went through the process at which they made N/S co-doped carbon for the seawater battery very well. The article only explained what was done briefly without going that much into how it was done and why. The article at times was also a bit hard to understand and some aspects were left unexplained. I think that this article could have benefited from going a bit more in depth as to how the SWB’s were altered as well as adding more explanations to back up what they are saying.