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50,000 cycles
Wow, a lifetime of 137 years at one cycle per day. This could make off-grid systems mainstream.
Long-time offgridder here. Would love to have a reasonable alternative to lead-acid or lithium. Opted for lead-acid again on the last battery swap around 5 years ago. Squeezed about 12 years out of the last set -though they were pretty degraded by that time. This bank is depreciating faster, probably because of increased use.
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Batteries degrade with age too. It would probably have to be cycled 10 times a day to get that many cycles.
I could see that happening if these are used in gas hybrid cars, or ev taxis, or maybe grid scale energy buffering
They may work for non plug in hybrids, which have quite small batteries that cycle a lot, but the energy density is far too low for full EV vehicles.
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Lower power density, higher cycle life, safer. Sounds good for stationary power storage.
And commuter cars probably. I'd love something I can drive to work and back, and then later upcycle into home energy storage.
CATL showed a 160 Wh/kg sodium-ion battery in 2021 and has plans to increase that density over 200 Wh/kg to better meet the needs of electric vehicles.
Hopefully that happens in a reasonable timeframe. I don't need high range, I just need cheap to repair or long life for a commuter. Maybe we'll get something similar for buses and light rail first before getting it for regular cars.
Yes, absolutely. For a regular daily commute to a job that allows you to afford 2 vehicles, having one of the two with a shorter range with more charge cycles makes a lot of sense.
Yup. I'm married with kids, so we need two cars regardless. The commuter just needs to reliably go ~50 miles between charges even during the winter, while the family car needs to fit my wife and kids and go at least 400 miles between charges (we like road trips).
Unfortunately, I haven't found the right fit since EVs are either too expensive, don't have enough winter range (e.g. old Leafs), or have too many safety advisories (e.g. batteries catching fire don't mesh with garage storage). Likewise for family cars. Most current EVs are in the awkward middle: too much range for a commute, and not enough for a road trip.
But if there was an economy car with ~150 miles range and inexpensive batteries, I'd probably buy it.
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Amazing how far we're progressing in battery technology in such a short amount of time.
And all it took was $100/BBL gas to get people off their asses. A shame we weren't pioneering this kind of research 40 years ago.
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Higher cycle life might also make it good for hybrids, since they cycle their batteries a fair bit.
non-flammable end use
Safe and stable chemistry
Oh neat, finally a non-explody and/or unstable battery lmao
Well, only relatively.
In order to work batteries need to have a certain amount of instability built in, on a chemical level. Them electrons have to want to jump from one material to a more reactive one; there is literally no other way. There is no such thing as a truly "safe and stable" battery chemistry. Such a battery would be inert, and not able to hold a charge. Even carbon-zinc batteries are technically flammable. I think these guys are stretching the truth a little for the layman, or possibly for the investor.
Lithium in current lithium-whatever cells is very reactive. Sodium on its own is extremely reactive, even moreso than lithium. Based on the minimal lookup I just did, this company appears to be using an aqueous electrolyte which makes sodium-ion cells a little safer (albeit at the cost of lower energy density, actually) but the notion that a lithium chemistry battery will burn but a sodium chemistry one "won't" is flat out wrong. Further, shorting a battery pack of either chemistry is not likely to result in a good day.
I believe it is still better due to raw material availability?
It is definitely that. That's kind of the point, actually. Sodium is easier to come by than lithium and does not require mining it from unstable parts of the world, nor relying on China.
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You who are so wise in the ways of science, can you explain to me if this is safe/will be super dangerous if exposed to water? Doesn't sodium, like, blow the fuck up when it comes in contact with water?
Yeah throwing a piece of sodium metal into water will cause a violent reaction. Even touching it with your finger is bad because of the moisture on your skin.
But sodium chloride (table salt) dissolves in water easily and safely, resulting in an aqueous solution including sodium ions.
Well, metallic sodium liberates hydrogen real fast on contact with water, which I guess is tantamount to the same thing.
Yes. But not to the same level as just dropping a brick of pure sodium in a bathtub. In a battery like this there is not pure lithium/sodium/whatever just sloshing around inside. The sodium is tied up being chemically bonded with whatever the anode and cathode materials are. Only a minority of the available sodium is actually free in the form of ions carrying the charge from cathode to anode.
Just as with lithium-ion chemistry batteries, it is vital that the cells remain sealed from the outside because the materials inside will indeed react with air, water, and the water in the air. Exposing the innards will cause a rapid exothermic reaction, i.e. it will get very hot and optionally go off bang.
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As usual there is absolutely no mention whatsoever anywhere in any of the articles I can find or from the company themselves about what the fucking price is
Why would there be? I didn't think these were for consumers.
Since they say they're putting them out from 48V to 800V, 48V is what most inverter systems use, so I imagine they're targetting that size for "consumers" at the single-house PV system size. If the cycle counts and low temperature charging characteristics come true, they will be popular.
American manufacturers like this like to shoot themselves in the foot by pricing their new and innovative battery technology at the datacenter customer size, find out they have no market, use up all their capital, then sell the tech to a big Chinese company like BYD or CATL. So once they've complete this lifecycle, I'd expect a couple more years before they're readily available to actual consumers. Probably expect to see them then at about LFP prices, like $90/kWh wholesale price.
https://diysolarforum.com/threads/upcoming-sodium-ion-batteries.61679/
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These aren't for you to buy directly, they are for manufacturers to negotiate a price and order in bulk from the company to then integrate them into their products or production facilities.
Late last year they were talking about $40 for a KWH which compared very favourably to LifePO4 that was more like $130 at the time and Li-ion that was more like $200. However right now on alibaba you can get a 200Ah battery for about $60 and the LifePO4 300Ah are now down in the $50 range which is an incredible drop in the space of 6 months. So in practice they are less dense and more expensive but I think its new technology introduction pricing and at some point it should be about a third cheaper than LifePO4 for the same capacity, all be it a bit bigger and heavier and quite considerably cheaper than Li-ion for the same capacity.
The small 18650 and other small sized cells have started appearing on aliexpress as well so its possible to get those too butt they are a lot more expensive than a basic Li-ion 18650 at the moment for a lot less capacity. I think its mostly the bigger cells that most people interested in Sodium Ion will be wanting (home battery and grid storage solutions and some of the low/mid range cars) more than small cells since typically the smaller stuff you want to maximise capacity even if it costs a bit more and most will want li-ion and ideally the newer nearly solid state li-ion that doubles capacity per KG.
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The mere fact that we can stop scorching the earth for lithium and cobalt is enough.
Now, we'll scorch it for salt.
Well, we have nearly an endless supply of salt here on the Internet, should be an easy transition.
Desalination of water is basically an endless supply of salt, we can't just push it back into the ocean because that increases the salt concentration in the ocean which is actually not great and when done at scale. But we didn't really have anywhere else to put the salt because there's already an abundance of it for use elsewhere but if we start using salt for Batteries it would be a great place for salt from desalination to go
can’t just push it back into the ocean because that increases the salt concentration in the ocean which is actually not great and when done at scale
Only locally, it's absolutely not a problem globally. That water will go back into the ocean soon enough. We're not generally putting wastewater in aquifers. The same is true of lithium. Both sodium and lithium form salts that dissolve in water, so over time their biggest concentration is in the water and that's why we refine it from salt flats.
I don't consider the refining of lithium to be a huge problem, other than the fact that it usually just means they're trucking a bunch of water to the desert for concentration and evaporation ponds (or worse, using the local groundwater in the desert instead of trucking in desalinated water like they should be).
To put it into perspective, high lithium brine and ore reserves contain about 14 million tons of lithium. Seawater contains over 2 trillion tons. We currently have a yearly consumption somewhere under 200 thousand tons. We won't be hitting a lithium resource crunch anytime soon, it'll just get more expensive. If we ever get hydrogen fusion running, we'd have to separate a bunch of lithium-6 which makes up under 5 percent of lithium.
Only locally
You make that sound like it isn't an issue. Massive ocean die-offs in a localized area is still a very bad thing.
There's a reason why oil spills are treated with such seriousness. Globally, an oil spill is also not a problem.
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Desalination is also a good way of getting lithium right now, it's just a bit less cost effective than surface mining dried oceans currently. Maybe if sodium demand also goes up, it'll be effective to capture desalination salts for both lithium and sodium.
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Sodium batteries are already in electric cars many months ago
Also you could buy individual cells on AliExpress
I don't think the article was trying to imply that they weren't already in use in electric cars, just that they would be better for them.
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Nuclear bros hate this one simple trick.
I love nuclear but this new battery tech has me super excited
It increases the viability of renewable energy sources (especially solar) which makes me hella happy
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Sodium? Like, salt sodium?
Salt is sodium chloride. Sodium is a metal, and it is right below Lithium on the periodic table (behaves and reacts similarly).
No, Sodium like the PlayStation game Sodium.
I couldn't find much in the chemistry but this seems exciting.
Chemist here. There's a lot in the chemistry and it is exciting
That is some great news
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this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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