The exploitation and utilization of seawater resources has become a significant research topic nowadays. In this communication, we report a rechargeable desalination battery system for the first time. This design can integrate the electrochemical battery, seawater desalination, and acid-alkali production in one system. The basic working principle of the designed system was illustrated, and further proved by the results of the experiments. Furthermore, future research directions and outlooks of this system are proposed. This conceptual work provides a promising technology for utilization of natural seawater resources.Energy and resources are the foundation of life and production. With the growth of the world population and the development of the global economy, the requirements of energy and resources are escalating greatly. Moreover, the growing environmental concerns associated with the traditional energy and resources utilization technologies are getting more and more attention all over the world. In view of these situations, the research and development of renewable, sustainable, green energy and resources utilization technologies have been the greatest challenge facing our humankind in the twenty-first century. [1][2][3][4][5] It is well known that ocean covers nearly three-quarters of the earth's surface. Ocean is a huge treasure house of various energy and resources. Several types of renewable ocean energy, such as wave energy, tidal energy, marine current energy, ocean thermal energy and salinity gradient energy, etc., have been researched and exploited in many coastal countries and regions. [6][7][8][9][10] Furthermore, nearly 97 % of water on earth is accumulated in ocean, that is seawater, which is saline (3.0-5.0 % dissolved salts) in nature. [11] Consequently, seawater desalination has become an important, promising and sustainable approach to address the serious global freshwater scarcity challenge, and has been heavily investigated. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] In addition, seawater contains large amounts of valuable minerals. Almost all the elements in the periodic table can be found in seawater, although many elements are present in very low concentration. [23] Minerals have been mined from seawater since ancient times. Common salt (NaCl) was apparently first systematically extracted from seawater some time prior to 2200 B.C. Many minerals can be produced as by-products during the seawater extraction process, although most elements have not been commercially extracted directly from seawater itself on any notable scale. [24][25][26][27][28] Overall, it is very important for the sustainable development of our humankind to exploit and use the energy and resources in ocean.Recently, a novel energy conversion and storage system, rechargeable seawater battery, using natural seawater as an abundant supply of active materials (sodium ion and dissolved O 2 in seawater), has been developed. [29][30][31] That is a new technology for utilization of seawater resources. Herein, we propose, for t...
Rechargeable seawater batteries (SWBs) are secondary batteries that use Na+ ions dissolved in water (seawater or salt-water) as the cathode material. Owing to the characteristics of seawater, SWBs have the advantages of low price, eco-friendliness, and excellent thermal stability. In particular, they are attracting attention for marine environment applications such as in light buoys, marine drones, auxiliary power for sailing boats and so on. So far, SWB design has been developed from the coin-type to prismatic-shape cell for research purposes to investigate cell components and electrochemical behaviors. However, for commercial applications, that generally require >12 V and >15 W, the development of an SWB module is required, including cell assembly and packing design. The purpose of this work was to conduct research on the SWB cell assembly method while considering the SWB's properties and minimizing current imbalance. Additionally, a 5 Series (S) 4 Parallel (P) SWB module is constructed and validated using commercially available light buoys (12 V, 15 W).
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