Electrolyte redesign boosts seawater battery

Seawater battery

Source: © Stefano Passerini/KIT

Anode-less system can both store energy and harvest sodium from the sea

A conducting polymer has fundamentally changed the design of seawater batteries. Researchers in Germany have incorporated this specialised material into an efficient metal-harvesting device, able to extract and store the latent chemical energy present in seawater.