12/7/22, 3:04 PM Battery That Extracts Energy from Water Salinity Difference

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Jun 1, 2011
by POWER

Water

Battery That Extracts Energy from Water S alinity

Difference

A rechargeable battery developed by researchers from Stanford University employs the difference in salinity between
freshwater and saltwater to generate a current. The technology could make it possible to harness power from anywhere
freshwater enters the sea, such as river mouths or estuaries, Yi Cui, associate professor of materials science and
engineering, who led the research team, said.

As the researchers explained in the March issue of the journal Nano Letters, the battery essentially uses two electrodes—
one positive, one negative—immersed in a liquid containing electrically charged particles or ions. In water, the ions are
sodium and chlorine, the components of ordinary table salt. The positive electrode is made from nanorods of
manganese dioxide, which increases the surface area available for interaction with the sodium ions by roughly 100 times
compared with other materials, Cui said. The researchers continue to search for a better material for the negative
electrode than the silver used for the experiments, which is too expensive to be practical.

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5. Worth one’s salt. A rechargeable battery

developed by Stanford University researchers
employs the difference in salinity between freshwater
and saltwater to generate power. In the first step, a
small electric current is applied to charge the battery,
pulling ions out of the electrodes and into the water.
In the second step, the freshwater is purged and
replaced with seawater. In the third step, electricity is
drawn from the battery for use, draining the battery
of its stored energy, and in the final step, seawater is
discharged and replaced with river water, for the cycle
to begin anew. Courtesy: Yi Cui
Initially, the battery is filled with freshwater and a small electric current is applied to charge it up. The freshwater is then
drained and replaced with seawater. Because seawater is salty, containing 60 to 100 times more ions than freshwater, it
increases the electrical potential, or voltage, between the two electrodes. That makes it possible to reap far more
electricity than the amount used to charge the battery. “The voltage really depends on the concentration of the sodium
and chlorine ions you have,” Cui said. “If you charge at low voltage in freshwater, then discharge at high voltage in sea
water, that means you gain energy. You get more energy than you put in.”

Once the discharge is complete, the seawater is drained and replaced with freshwater and the cycle can begin again.
“The key thing here is that you need to exchange the electrolyte, the liquid in the battery,” Cui said.

In their lab experiments, Cui’s team used seawater they collected from the Pacific Ocean off the California coast and
freshwater from Donner Lake, high in the Sierra Nevada. They achieved 74% efficiency in converting the potential energy
in the battery to electrical current, but Cui thinks with simple modifications, the battery could be 85% efficient.

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Other researchers have used the salinity contrast between freshwater and seawater to produce electricity, but those
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processes typically require ions to move through a membrane to generate current. Cui said those membranes tend to
be fragile, which is a drawback. Those methods also typically make use of only one type of ion, while his battery uses
both the sodium and chlorine ions to generate power.

Cui admitted that one significant theoretical limiting factor is the amount of freshwater available. However, the
researchers claim that their batteries could supply 2 TWh of power annually if all the world’s rivers were put to use.
According to the team’s calculations, a power plant operating with 50 cubic meters of freshwater per second could have
a capacity of up to 100 MW.

The battery would be best suited for the Amazon River, which drains a large part of South America, but other continents,
such as Africa and North America could also benefit. Cui even suggested that treated sewage water might work. “If we
can use sewage water, this will sell really well,” he said.

—Sonal Patel is POWER’s senior writer.

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Jul 1, 2017
by POWER

Hydro

Researchers Develop Hybrid S alinity Gradient

Power Technology

A hybrid technology created by researchers at Penn State University could be the breakthrough needed to advance
efforts to produce power based on the salt concentrations between two water sources.

Researchers in May unveiled the technology, which essentially seeks to generate power from regions where freshwater
in rivers meets the seawater in oceans. Methods to capture energy from salinity gradients already exist and have long
been studied. The two most successful methods currently in use are pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) and reverse
electrodialysis (RED).

In PRO, which has evolved since the 1970s as the most common system, water from a low-salinity feed solution
permeates through a semi-permeable membrane into a pressurized, high-salinity draw solution, and power is captured
by depressuring the permeate through a hydroturbine. According to Christopher Gorski, assistant professor in
environmental engineering at Penn State, PRO is so far the best technology in terms of how much energy can be

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captured. “But the main problem with PRO is that the membranes that transport the water through foul, meaning that
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bacteria grows on them or particles get stuck on their surfaces, and they no longer transport water through them,” he
explained. Holes in the membranes are incredibly small, and they become blocked easily. Also, PRO doesn’t have the
ability to withstand the necessary pressures of super-salty waters, he said.

RED, on the other hand, uses an electrochemical gradient to develop voltages across ion-exchange membranes. It
creates energy when chloride or sodium ions are kept from crossing the ion-exchange membranes. “Ion-exchange
membranes only allow either positively charged ions to move through them or negatively charged ions,” Gorski said. “So
only the dissolved salt is going through, and not the water itself.” But RED’s downfall is that it doesn’t have the ability to
produce large amounts of power, he explained.

A relatively new method called capacitive mixing (CapMix) uses an electrode-based technology that captures energy
from the voltage that develops when two identical electrodes are sequentially exposed to two different kinds of water
with varying salt concentrations, such as freshwater and seawater. But, it, too, isn’t yet able to generate much power.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Penn State researchers’ solution is to combine CapMix and RED in an
electrochemical flow cell. The custom-built flow cell (Figure 1) features two channels separated by an anion-exchange
membrane. “A copper hexacyanoferrate electrode was then placed in each channel, and graphite foil was used as a
current collector. The cell was then sealed using two end plates with bolts and nuts,” the university said. “Once built, one
channel was fed with synthetic seawater, while the other channel was fed with synthetic freshwater. Periodically
switching the water’s flow paths allowed the cell to recharge and further produce power.”

1. Worth its salt. This image shows the concentration flow cell. Two plates clamp the cell together, which contains two
narrow channels fed with either synthetic freshwater or seawater through the plastic lines. Courtesy: Penn State/Jennifer
Matthews
“There are two things going on here that make it work,” said Gorski. “The first is you have the salt going to the
electrodes. The second is you have the chloride transferring across the membrane. Since both of these processes
generate a voltage, you end up developing a combined voltage at the electrodes and across the membrane.”

The team said it recorded open-circuit cell voltages while feeding two solutions at 15 milliliters per minute. “At 12.6 watts
per square meter, this technology leads to peak power densities that are unprecedentedly high compared to previously
reported RED (2.9 watts per square meter), and on par with the maximum calculated values for PRO (9.2 watts per
square meter), but without the fouling problems,” it said.

The researchers will now explore how stable the electrodes remain over time, as well as analyzing how other elements in
seawater—like magnesium and sulfate—might affect the performance of the cell.

—Sonal Patel is a POWER associate editor

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#Technology #Salinity #Penn State #Salt #Hybrid #Hybrid Technology

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