Date: 2025-04-07 hits: 143
Deep sea technology has been elevated to a strategic level alongside low altitude economy and commercial aerospace, and this emerging industry is facing unprecedented development opportunities. Under the central government's regulation and policy promotion, the deep-sea technology industry chain has also become more perfect, and lithium batteries have gradually become the core energy choice for deep-sea equipment due to their high energy density, high safety and other advantages.
This year, deep-sea technology has been included in the government work report for the first time, marking a clear deployment of the development direction of this field at the national level. The report proposes to carry out large-scale application demonstration actions for new technologies, products, and scenarios, and to place deep-sea technology in a key position alongside commercial aerospace and low altitude economy.
Local governments immediately responded positively, and Shanghai, Hainan, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Xiamen and other places successively issued relevant plans to further increase support for the marine industry, especially in the field of deep-sea technology.
For example, the Shanghai Municipal Oceanic Administration is formulating a blueprint for the development of the marine industry and observation network in the next decade, and issuing guiding documents to promote high-quality development of the marine economy; The Ocean Development Bureau of Qingdao City, Shandong Province held a special meeting to focus on promoting future marine industry projects, including deep-sea development.
From the perspective of policy context, the country's expression of deep-sea technology has undergone an evolution from "deep-sea engineering" to "deep-sea deep earth exploration", and now to "deep-sea technology", reflecting that China's strategic focus is shifting from basic scientific research to building a complete industrial chain, further promoting technological breakthroughs and industrialization landing.
The industrial chain of deep-sea economy covers multiple links such as equipment manufacturing, basic technology research and development, resource exploration and development, and commercial services, involving multiple fields such as raw materials, components, deep-sea robots, deep-sea equipment, marine renewable energy development, and marine oil and gas extraction.
Industry analysts believe that deep-sea equipment manufacturing in the industry chain will be the first to experience rapid growth. Due to the extreme deep-sea environment, strict requirements have been placed on the pressure resistance, safety, and corrosion resistance of equipment. For a long time, the high-end deep-sea equipment market has been mainly dominated by international enterprises. However, with the advancement of the national deep-sea technology strategy, leading domestic enterprises are accelerating technological breakthroughs and are expected to make breakthroughs in core areas, achieving import substitution.
Therefore, compared to the "low altitude economy" that builds an industrial chain around electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (VTOL), deep-sea technology focuses on deep-sea equipment and expands towards diversified application scenarios, forming a unique development path.
In the core technology system of deep-sea equipment, the power system is crucial. Deep sea power systems must meet strict requirements such as high voltage resistance, high safety, and high energy density. Currently, lithium batteries are gradually replacing traditional nickel chromium and silver zinc batteries as the mainstream power source for both manned submersibles (HOVs) and unmanned cableless submersibles (AUVs).
The traditional deep-sea power system has low energy density, high cost, and inconvenient maintenance, which restricts the complex operational capabilities of deep-sea equipment. In recent years, with the breakthrough of lithium battery technology, the power system of China's deep-sea exploration equipment is undergoing upgrades.
For example, the Jiaolong, which has a deep-sea diving capability of 7062 meters, has adopted deep-sea pressure resistant lithium batteries instead of the original silver zinc batteries to enhance energy reserves and reduce diving operation costs. Prior to this, deep-sea submersibles such as the "Deep Sea Warrior" and the "Deep Sea Challenger" from the United States had already used lithium-ion batteries as their main power source. The lithium batteries carried by the "Deep Sea Challenger" even supported its descent to a depth of 11000 meters.
With the continuous evolution of lithium battery technology, solid-state batteries are becoming an important development direction for future deep-sea equipment power systems. It is worth noting that Qingdao is not only a key layout area for deep-sea technology, but also an important frontier for research and industrialization of homomorphic batteries.
The team led by Cui Guanglei from the Qingdao Institute of Energy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has successfully developed a deep-sea power system with ultra-high energy density based on a composite solid electrolyte material system. It has been mounted on "Qingneng" and completed 9 dives for the "Wanquan" deep-sea lander, with a maximum working depth of 10918 meters, achieving the first demonstration application of China's 10000 meter deep-sea power system.
The "Qingneng -" power system completed a 26 day single voyage in the Mariana Trench with the "Exploration 1" scientific research vessel, breaking through the technical bottleneck of long-term dependence on cable power supply for the domestic 10000 meter deep-sea scientific research.
Under the continuous promotion of national strategy, the deep-sea technology industry is accelerating its development, and the technological breakthroughs and application scenarios of deep-sea equipment have also entered a critical period. With the continuous advancement of lithium battery and solid-state battery technology, the research and application of deep-sea equipment in China will further break through, not only assisting in the development of deep-sea resources, but also opening up new growth space for the lithium battery industry.
