Seaweed Serves the Future of Sodium Metal Batteries

The future of large-scale applications looks to sodium-metal batteries (SMBs) as a viable high-energy and small expenditure energy storage device. Currently they are held back by unmanaged masses of crystals (dendrites), which infiltrate the battery’s separator and cause a low resistance connection between conductors.

This problem could be resolved using a separator built of cellulose nanoparticles generated from brown seaweed.

The study explains how these seaweed-containing fibres enhance battery efficiency in addition to preventing sodium electrode crystals from permeating the separator.

Author of the study, Jing Wang, explained that “the aim of a separator is to separate the functioning parts of a battery and allow free transport of the charge. Seaweed-based materials allow for greater storage capacity and efficiency, increasing the lifetime of the batteries — something which is key to powering devices such as mobile phones for much longer.”

According to Prof. Steve Eichhorn “this work really demonstrates that greener forms of energy storage are possible, without being destructive to the environment in their production,”

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