Author(s): Russ Hammond; Roger Colony
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Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: This paper presents the results of a development effort to improve seawater batteries as a viable long-term energy source for Arctic instrumentation and sensing circuitry. The batteries use seawater as the electrolyte and slowly expend a magnesium anode to develop electrical power. While this type of battery can produce power for a year or longer, its output is limited by a size and shape requirement to accommodate fitting it through an ice auger hole. Another limitation is that this type of battery chemistry only produces an output of around 1 volt. These constraints impose difficult requirements on the low-voltage power converter required to step the voltage up to a level useful in powering logic or instrumentation loads. The initial encouraging results of deploying a seawater battery system in the Arctic are presented.
Year: 1990