
Extra salty sodium battery performs on par with lithium - bornelsewhere
https://newatlas.com/energy/sodium-battery-alternative-lithium/
======
wccrawford
It keeps saying "some lithium-ion batteries".

>a comparable energy capacity and cycling ability to some lithium-ion
batteries

Is that just covering their asses, or does this only perform as well as the
worst-performing lithium-ion batteries?

~~~
Reason077
Performing on par with the "worst" lithium-ion batteries would still be a
great success if sodium-ion is cheaper to manufacture. They would still
perform much better than lead-acid, Ni-MH, etc. There's a huge demand for
cheaper batteries.

~~~
skohan
Especially in cases where size/weight is not critically important. This could
be a huge deal for something like a home solar setup where batteries can make
up a significant portion of the cost.

~~~
wlesieutre
Also a huge deal for grid-scale applications. We've seen Tesla do that with
lithium ion batteries for grid stability and energy price arbitrage, but if it
were cheap and easy to produce batteries at massive scale without needing
relatively rare elements like lithium, maybe we'd have big enough batteries to
run the whole grid overnight off of solar.

~~~
csours
I was curious as to relative abundance:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust)

Sodium is number 6 on the list, while Lithium is way down in the middle (above
lead, below cobalt). Also, you can literally scoop sodium out of the ocean, so
extraction will never be a problem over any reasonable human timescale.

~~~
AaronM
I was curious about how much salt was in the ocean. There is approximately 50
quintillion kilograms of salt in the ocean, which is nearly the mass of the
moon

From this website [https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/what-makes-ocean-salty-and-
how...](https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/what-makes-ocean-salty-and-how-much-
salt-ocean)

~~~
danw1979
I’m no quantity surveyor, but that sounds like someone placed the decimal
point blindfolded in that calculation.

A quick google says the mass of just the water on Earth is 0.02% of total mass
and the mass of the moon is 1.2% of Earth’s.

Someone please point out my mistake.

~~~
jbotz
The mistake is in the original citation... the moon's mass in 7x10^22 kg, and
the number they gave for salt in the ocean (which I haven't verified) was
5x10^19 kg, so that would mean that the moon is about 1000 times heavier than
the salf in the ocean... hardly 'nearly the mass of the moon'.

~~~
thechao
I dunno. The moon's pretty big. Even if you're off by a factor of 1000, it's
still ... a lot.

~~~
mikorym
This is why the need arose for talking about "orders of magnitude". If you use
base 10, the order is 3, which is generally considered as a large difference.

For a related reason you need "big oh" notation for computing speeds. But in
that case the magnitude difference over larger numbers is what you are
interested in. The difference between O(n) and O(n^2) can grow to an arbitrary
magnitude difference. If you want a difference of 1000, then take n = 1000,
and you get O(n|n = 1000) = 1000 and O(n^2|n=1000) = 1 000 000. But if you
take n = 1 000 000, the ratio is now 1 000 000 = 1 000 000 / 1 000 000 000
000. So, a badly written sort function can get pretty bad with large arrays.

Anyway, the latter is just tangential to show that indeed as you say, context
is important (abundance and total need for a resource) and factors vs. growth-
in-factors over large numbers are different. Resources scale linearly to use
in product output, however, so the "big oh" (counter-)analogy is just for the
sake of interest.

------
baybal2
TIP: The shortage of lithium is nowhere near as "catastrophic" as stockmarket
people believe.

The shortage of cobalt is a by far bigger problem. It's basically 80% about
Congo, and what happens there.

50% to 80% of global supply can evaporate overnight if something is happening
there.

~~~
Sevaris
Wouldn't a sodium-ion battery be much more environmentally friendly to
produce? It seems like there's value in sustainability that makes this
attractive over lithium-based batteries.

~~~
bufferoverflow
Only if the energy density is not important for your application. There are
such applications, but they are a minority. Smartphones, laptops, car
batteries all want to be both light and small.

~~~
myself248
Yeah, but if all the grid storage and powerwall production could go sodium,
that would free up lithium for the places it's needed.

The same argument could be made for nickel-iron batteries, though. They're
heavy and bulky, but they last literally forever, and their source materials
are ludicrously abundant. Why don't we see nickel-iron grid-scale storage? I'd
love to know.

~~~
extrapickles
They are relatively expensive, they have fairly high self-discharge rates and
aren’t very efficient. Last I checked, they had on the order of 1%/day
discharge (some versions are as low as ~20%/month). They also are not very
efficient in the charge/discharge cycle, losing 30-40% of the power put in.
Lithium currently is around 10%.

Their primary use is in applications where their long lifetimes outweigh all
other considerations.

------
jasoneckert
It's nice to see this progress - it's definitely been a focus for people for a
long time.

I remember one of my chemistry profs in the 1990s telling us how Sodium ion
batteries could eclipse Lithium ion batteries once we figure out the
practicality to make it work.

------
JoeAltmaier
Gotta be dead-heavy? Sodium is atomic weight 22, while Lithum is 7. Three
times as heavy? Or is the electrolyte too small a fraction to matter much.

~~~
ysleepy
There is very little actual lithium in li-ion batteries. This will not be a
problem.

~~~
mehrdadn
For those wondering: 0.6 grams of lithium out of 45 grams for an 18650
battery, or about 1.3% by weight.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Thanks! I just looked that up and was going to post. Beat me to it!

So it is very different - a li-ion battery anode is a tiny part of the
battery. A lead-acid battery, its a much larger component.

------
smt88
Recent context on sodium batteries:
[https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/a-battery-
technology...](https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/a-battery-technology-
worth-its-salt/3010966.article)

------
mehrdadn
Sort of off-topic, but why is sodium more abundant than lithium?

~~~
smolder
The stellar processes that result in stable lithium are rare, like
supernovas.[1] Another factor in its rarity as a material is that while it's
present in a lot of things, it's not present in quantities for economical
recovery.

1\.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/11/14/this...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/11/14/this-
is-why-three-of-the-lightest-elements-are-so-cosmically-rare/)

~~~
mehrdadn
Ahh, thanks! So if I understand correctly, it's because its stable isotopes
can only be produced in high quantities through fission rather than fusion
(otherwise they get destroyed in the same processes).

------
hinkley
During the dotcom era someone tried to build Flow batteries (although I don't
think the term had been coined yet), and if memory serves they were sodium
chemistry.

There's a hint on the wikipedia page that someone may be trying it again, but
I'm having trouble following the citations to figure out who.

------
peter_d_sherman
>"One of the problems with them in their current form, however [...] inactive
sodium crystals tend to build up on the surface of the negatively-charged
electrode [...] which winds up killing the battery."

[...]

"Experimenting with the design of sodium-ion batteries led the team to produce
a version with a cathode made of

 _layered metal oxide_

and a liquid electrolyte with a higher concentration of sodium ions.

In testing, the team found that this led to a much smoother interaction
between the electrolyte and the cathode, enabling the continuous movement of
the sodium ions and

 _avoiding the troublesome buildup of inactive crystals on the cathode
surface._

The upshot of that was battery offering capacity similar to some lithium-ion
batteries and with an uninterrupted generation of electricity, maintaining 80
percent of its charge after 1,000 cycles."

------
fnord77
how is this possible with Li having a higher electronegativity than Na?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Use more Na?

------
Ice_cream_suit
Controlling Surface Phase Transition and Chemical Reactivity of O3-Layered
Metal Oxide Cathodes for High-Performance Na-Ion Batteries

Junhua Song, Kuan Wang, Jianming Zheng _, Mark H. Engelhard, Biwei Xiao,
Enyuan Hu, Zihua Zhu, Chongmin Wang, Manling Sui, Yuehe Lin_ , David Reed,
Vincent L. Sprenkle, Pengfei Yan _, and Xiaolin Li_

ACS Energy Lett. 2020, 5, XXX, 1718–1725 Publication Date:April 28, 2020

[https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.0c00700](https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.0c00700)

"Abstract:

O3-layered metal oxides are promising cathode materials for high-energy Na-ion
batteries (SIBs); however, they suffer from fast capacity fade.

Here, we develop a high-performance O3-NaNi0.68Mn0.22Co0.10O2 cathode for SIBs
toward practical applications by suppressing the formation of a rock salt
layer at the cathode surface with an advanced electrolyte.

The cathode can deliver a high specific capacity of ∼196 mAh g–1 and
demonstrates >80% capacity retention over 1000 cycles.
NaNi0.68Mn0.22Co0.10O2–hard carbon full-cells with practical loading (>2.5 mAh
cm–2) and lean electrolyte (∼40 μL) demonstrate ∼82% capacity retention after
450 cycles.

A 60 mAh single-layer pouch cell has also been fabricated and demonstrated
stable performance. This work represents a significant leap in SIB development
and brings new insights to the development of advanced layered metal oxide
cathodes for alkaline-ion batteries."

~~~
lstodd
82% capacity retention after 450 cycles is nothing to write home about.

Besides those are lab tests. Show a thousand cycles of a hundred cells at
various temperatures and vibration loads and there will be something to talk
about.

------
markdown
Someone tell me how this amazing discovery won't work in practice.

~~~
ShorsHammer
There's a universe of uses for batteries. Really depends on what you want it
for.

For the average person using consumer products they are usually concerned with
energy density and cost. Apart from electric cars most companies don't really
care about no. of cycles, especially for phones.

~~~
dgoldstein0
... but don't we charge our phones every day? 1000 cycles feels like a minimum
for that - would be required for a phone to last 3 years.

~~~
viktorko
In my experience phone batteries start to deteriorate after about two year.

------
Altheasy
One of the problems with them in their current form, however, is that while
this is going on inactive sodium crystals tend to build up on the surface of
the negatively-charged electrode, the cathode, which winds up killing the
battery. Additionally, sodium-ion batteries don't hold as much energy as their
lithium-ion counterparts.

~~~
barrkel
> Song and his team believe they may have come up with a solution to these
> shortcomings.

(Not sure what you're getting at here.)

