758
New sodium ion battery stores twice the energy and desalinates seawater
(www.sciencedaily.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
758 points (97.4% liked)
Technology
82518 readers
4133 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Desalinating water might be the best part. Usually, solar power has the downside of needing storage and desalination has the downside of big energy requirements. If you can do both at the same time, it's a big win for dry climates with lots of sun
There is also the issue with the salt by itself in desalinisation. If it's removed with water, you have to deal with that stuff. Table salt is really cheap and there is plenty of offer,, so you can't really economically clean it enough and package it for human consumption or industrial use. So what usually happens is that they dump it back at one moment or another. And that is a hard pollution, and can lead to dead zones around the desalinisation plants if not managed well enough. Being able to add it in a high demand product such as batteries takes all those hurdles away
Make it into bricks and build a pyramid somewhere really dry?
I need a shit ton of salt in winter for my road. But for how long?
Ever wondered what the salt does after melting?
Same issue.
I use salt as a a weed killer in some specific area. So I guess I know, at least a little bit
Could the excess sodium used for carbon sequestration? Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda but I don't know what it could be used for aside from baking or if the energy to capture that carbon would even be a net positive.
and boats.
I can't imagine it's doing this at a rate that will make a big impact on water supply, I suspect this is one of those things they throw in just to have a good headline.
Water supply where? In Saudi Arabia it could be revolutionary tech when combined with solar
Not, for example, if it's only producing 1l/day.
But you can't imagine it doing a lot more?
I don't think batteries will soak up that much salt for their use. And I'd imagine they saturate over time. It's very different than something built specifically for deslination.
Each battery won't, but a factory making lots of batteries...
Maybe. If it was a compelling case I'd think they'd show us the data.
They are not going to get the sodium from desalination, they will mine it because it's cheaper.
and more pure
Exactly, the desalination gimmick is bullshit for STEM ignorant hippies.
Countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE depend on it
Desalination sodium is free if you want the water