MIT engineers and collaborators developed a solar-powered device that avoids the salt-clogging issues of other designs. Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun. In a pap
  • partial_accumenEnglish
    9•1 year ago

    But reading the brine discharge always makes me wish that grid based sodium ion batteries would be researched more. But can’t have that because oil companies already put large deposits into lithium mines.

    Its light on specifics but China is already producing Sodium batteries which makes sense for a nation that is technologically advanced, but resource poor. Since China doesn’t have any entrenched petroleum interests, and is geopolitically distant to most of the proven cobalt and lithium supplies, it makes sense for them to use what they have plenty of.

    Honestly, I’m excited about this. Sodium batteries aren’t very energy dense, but they should be very cheap. Lots of applications don’t need physically small batteries (like grid or solar tied).