Researchers develop seawater-based energy harvester

The research team was led by principal researcher Seungmin Hyun and senior researcher Hye-Mi So of the Department of Nano-devices and Displays at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM), and Professor Soo-Hwan Jeong of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Kyungpook National University.

The energy harvester is said to utilise multi-walled carbon nanotubes and graphene oxide films with different content of oxygen functional groups as the cathode and anode and uses seawater as the electrolyte.

During this process, more cations in the electrolyte gather closer to the anode, which has a relatively higher oxygen functional group content, and a potential difference is created because of the rearrangement of ions between the two electrodes.

According to KIMM, conventional water-based energy harvesters have low energy conversion efficiency and require external energy sources to continuously generate the movement of water for reuse, which makes them difficult to be used continuously. Moreover, the utilisation of these harvesters is limited in environments where external sources of energy cannot be supplied.