Sea water
Seawater, we humans consider it useless because it is undrinkable, and does not seem to serve any purpose for us. In addition, if you are injured in seawater you could get an infection. We look at seawater as a source of irritation and nuisance. However, there is a way seawater could be useful for us humans. What if I told you that we could use seawater for producing energy? Sounds crazy? I know, that is what I first thought about when I heard about it. But it’s true, we can use seawater as a source of clean energy, and we can use it to replace fossil fuels. Also, we can use this fuel in our existing vehicles, we could stop emissions from the transportation industry. What might seem useless to us is actually, one of the renewable sources of energy we can use to completely replace fossil fuels.
But how does it work? How can we use seawater as a clean source of energy? There are different ways to use seawater as a clean source of energy, but one of the most promising is to harness the energy from the mixing of freshwater and seawater. Every cubic meter of freshwater that mixes with seawater produces about 0.65 kilowatt – hours of energy, enough to power the average American house for about 30 minutes. Globally, the theoretically recoverable energy from coast water treatment plants is about 18 gigawatts – enough to power more than 15 million homes continuously. Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new battery that can capture this blue energy without membranes, moving parts or energy input. This battery is made from affordable and durable materials and could make coastal wastewater treatment plants energy-independent and carbon neutral. Another way to use seawater as a source of clean energy is to exploit the differences in water temperatures between the surface and deep ocean. This is called ocean thermal conversion (OTEC). OTEC uses a heat engine to produce electricity from the temperature gradient. OTEC has the potential to provide baseload power and desalinated water for coastal regions. This is how seawater can be used as a renewable source of energy.
We overlooked the significance of seawater. There are a lot of energy sources that we can use instead of fossil fuels like nuclear energy, solar energy, and of course the use of seawater. But, we sometimes overlook their significance and choose not to use them. But Climate Change has increased at an alarming rate, we could be facing an extinction event if this continues. So considering how much trouble we are in, we have to try all types of sustainable energy sources. And seawater is one of those sustainable energy sources that we can use to replace fossil fuels. We are in a crisis so we must keep an open mind to all types of possible clean energy sources.
Replacing fossil fuels with seawater might seem like a daunting task but it is possible. Heck, even the US Navy did it once in 2014. They powered one of their warships using seawater. Using seawater as a form of clean energy is not a very popular idea, and few people know that this is possible. It’s time the world starts taking the use of seawater as a clean form of energy seriously. Governments around the world need to build more power plants that are converting seawater into usable clean energy and fund them. If we all work together, we can do this in a fast and effective way. I’m confident that if we do all this, we will one day have a world with no Climate Change.
