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Xylakant • yesterday at 3:37 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

You really don't want to cool anything with sea water directly. It's corrosive due to the salt and contains all kinds of fun things from flotsam to critters, some of which might make a home in your cooling loop. in this case, additionally, sea water is conductive and that's not acceptable in a battery.

However, feeding the coolant through some sort of heat exchange with the sea water is very likely something they do.


Replies

baud147258 • yesterday at 3:47 PM

> However, feeding the coolant through some sort of heat exchange with the sea water is very likely something they do.

Aren't ship engines usually cooled with sea water already (through a heat exchanger, not directly)? So it's not really something new

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msandford • yesterday at 3:52 PM

Also saltwater is conductive so if you submerged your batteries in it, you'd have an immediate short circuit. It's definitely through a heat exchanger.