For years, one of the greatest vulnerabilities in military underwater operations has been the need for submarines to surface and recharge—often for hours, even days, exposing crews to danger and limiting strategic flexibility. Now, Destiny Law, an electrical engineering Ph.D. candidate at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering is developing a battery that could change that.
Law, an Orlando native, is building a lithium seawater flow battery designed to power unmanned submarines and underwater vehicles for significantly longer durations. Her technology, which incorporates seawater directly into the electrochemical process, promises to deliver more than 10 times the energy of traditional lithium-ion batteries.
“For submarines, right now they have to come back to the surface to recharge, and they can sometimes have to stay for hours, sometimes even days,” Ms. Law said. “That’s very dangerous for our soldiers. With our battery, if they do have to come back up to recharge, it’s only for maybe 30 minutes max.”
Her research represents the first major project to emerge from a renewed partnership between FAMU and The Boeing Company, where Ms. Law will begin working full-time after graduating this spring. It also underscores how university-industry collaborations are increasingly driving innovation in national security technology.
The path to the prototype was not straightforward. Ms. Law entered the project with little prior battery expertise. “It was a whole new world for me,” she admitted. “I had very limited battery knowledge. But that was the most exciting part—to open up a new space I’d never been in as an electrical engineer.”
Setbacks were frequent. Early tests failed. Components corroded. Electrodes degraded. But her persistence impressed her faculty advisor, Dr. Petru Andrei, a professor of electrical and computer engineering.
“Working with Destiny made this quite exciting,” Dr. Andrei said. “She was so dedicated to the project—she loved it from the very beginning. You could see her coming on the weekends. She was really excited.”
That commitment has begun to pay off. The seawater battery not only offers dramatically extended life but also simplifies logistics by using the ocean itself as an electrolyte resource—eliminating the need for heavy, pre-contained chemical solutions.
The implications extend beyond defense. Scientific research vessels, deep-sea exploration drones, and even marine monitoring systems could operate with unprecedented endurance. For military planners, it offers the promise of quieter, longer, and less detectable underwater presence.
Ms. Law’s success has already inspired a new generation of researchers. Dr. Andrei noted that the team is already recruiting other students to continue her work over the next three to four years.
For now, Ms. Law is focused on finalizing her dissertation and preparing to transition her research from the academic lab to Boeing’s applied engineering division. She looks back on the challenges not as obstacles, but as necessary steps.
“Finally being able to get that success after all those fails,” she said, “was the best part of my research.”
In an era of great power competition and expanding undersea ambitions, innovations like Ms. Law’s may soon help redefine what is possible beneath the waves.