
The First Sodium-Ion Rechargeable Battery - danboarder
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/a-first-prototype-of-a-sodiumion-rechargeable-battery
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DiabloD3
I both love and hate stories like this: I love them because it is amazing
we're still finding new ways of making batteries; I hate them because at least
3/4th never make it to market, and the ones that do usually take about a
decade.

Example: ubiquitous high speed front side bus interconnects between devices.
Infiniband, Thunderbolt, RDMA over Ethernet, multi-host USB 3.x networks,
whatever. Getting cheaper? Yes. Ubiquitous? No.

Example: Freesync being deployed everywhere, in monitors, on phones/tablets,
being added to HDMI and put on all future TVs, and finally just eradicating a
ton of processing latency in the display and getting UI responsiveness I last
saw when all analog VGA CRTs existed. Is that a thing yet? No.

Example: Internet so fast that latency basically vanishes, and the last mile
is no longer a liability, thanks to ISPs like Google Fiber proving it is
cheap, easy, and _required_ to deploy. Do I have Google Fiber or anyone else
standing up to the challenge yet? No.

Example: A smartwatch, in the vein of Google Wear or iWatch, that has a week+
battery life, and can do various action tracking shit that Moov has been
pioneering, and has actual working heart rate tracking, and has water
proofness measured in tens of meters (so I can go swimming with the thing on
if I so choose). Is _that_ a thing yet? No.

All of these have been promised to me in the past decade. I'm tired of getting
my hopes up, but hope is one of the few things I have left.

~~~
throwaway000002
Irrespective of technological hurdles, it takes money for the future to
arrive, and "good enough" is often good enough.

I still slap myself in reminder that we actually landed on the moon... and
came back alive.

~~~
agumonkey
Yet no man can install a printer. Let's think about that for a minute.

~~~
dsr_
I've never had a problem installing and using a printer with all of these
critical features:

\- uses wired ethernet

\- listens to CUPS or LPR

\- speaks PostScript or a highly compatible clone

~~~
agumonkey
Write a paper about this and enjoy your Fields medal.

~~~
dsr_
Sadly, I am no longer qualified to win the Fields medal.

I do have 28 years of printer installation experience, though.

~~~
agumonkey
> I do have 28 years of printer installation experience, though.

That makes you a semi-god though.

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lhl
90 Wh/kg is actually a pretty decent energy density (LiPo batteries are now
approaching 200 Wh/kg, but less combustible LiFe chemistries are around 100
Wh/kg). Does anyone know if there's any information on how the
stability/thermal characteristics of the sodium-ion compares?

~~~
lhl
Just to follow up, since I was curious to do a bit of searching:

* Wikipedia's article [1] mentions two other startups working on sodium-ion batteries. Faradion apparently has a 150 Wh/kg sodium-ion battery [2]. According to the Wikipedia article, "These cells can be completely drained (to zero charge) without damaging the active materials. They can be stored and shipped safely."

* A Physics Today article entitled "Surprising stability for sodium-ion batteries" [3] summarizes a Brookhaven National Laboratory that despite an expected worse performance for Na vs Li, (with a tin anode), they found that "after that initial damage, subsequent desodiation and nine further charging–discharging cycles produced no further fractures: The expansion and shrinkage were reversible and produced a minimal decrease in charge capacity."

* While searching I found an interesting paper on a NA-SO2 formulation "A room-temperature sodium rechargeable battery using an SO2-based nonflammable inorganic liquid catholyte" [4] which has great numbers (discharge capacity similar to LiFe), but seems like one of those battery formulations that never make it out into the real world.

That's as far as my passing curiousity took it, but if anyone works in the
field, it'd be interesting to hear their thoughts.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-
ion_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery)

[2] [http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i29/Challenging-Lithium-
Ion-B...](http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i29/Challenging-Lithium-Ion-
Batteries-New.html)

[3]
[http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/n...](http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.5.7184)

[4]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525335/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525335/)

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throwaway000002
Since several tangents have already been taken in comments to this story, when
are fuel cells for electronics supposed to arrive? I could've sworn they were
"just around the corner" about five years ago.

[goes off to do a HN search]

Okay, so they died:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8240994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8240994)

I can only imagine this tech has turned to toxic waste as some patent firm has
probably gobbled up the dregs only to lie in wait for the idea to resurface.

