Hsu, Jeremy. “These Underwater Drones Use Water Temperature Differences To Recharge.” IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News, 3 Sept. 2020, 16:45 GMT, spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/renewable-power-underwater-drones.
Article title:
These Underwater Drones Use Water Temperature Differences To Recharge
Photo: Seatrec
Two Seatrec energy harvesting modules attached to a profiling float going as deep as 1000m.
My summary of article:
CEO Yi Chao's startup Seatrec has developed a renewable energy harvesting system for supplying energy to underwater drones. The problems Seatrec aims to resolve by developing their energy supplier is the waste of money and the assortment of lithium-ion batteries that contributes to ocean pollution due to underwater drones being treated as disposable devices since there is (was) no practical way of charging them other than identifying their positions, sending people to those locations, and charging them manually – a very tiring and unsustainable approach.
Seatrec's energy harvesting system operates by utilizing the principle of how certain substances transition between solid, liquid, and gas states with small changes in temperature, and that the pressure changes resulting from these phase changes can be converted to electric energy, essentially generating electricity from temperature differences according to the depth the system is located in the ocean.
Many organizations are interested in buying Seatrec's energy harvesting system, including U.S. Office of Naval Research, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Seatrec's next step is to gather long-term oceanographic data with swarms of theoretically infinitely operating underwater drones to truly understand our oceans.
My response to the article
I was shocked by the fact that most underwater drones for research purposes are not recollected after they accomplish their missions because they have a finite amount of energy that cannot be recharged for another research purpose or mission. Seatrec's energy harvesting system is inspiring because it utilizes a simple chemical principle to resolve an ongoing environmental and technological problem that contributes to unnecessary ocean pollution and economic waste.
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