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It keeps saying "some lithium-ion batteries". >a comparable energy capacity and cycling ability to some lithium-ion batteries Is that just covering their asse

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - slfnflctd 6y ago
    I've been waiting for competition in this space to heat up for about full decade now. Around the start of the 2010s I was doing a ton of research, and it seemed like a big win was just around the corner... somehow it seems farther away now. I really hope something - anything - makes it out of the lab at a market-busting price point soon, it might actually give me a chance to restart some projects that have been collecting dust on the shelf for way too long.
    - choeger 6y ago
      The thing is that li ion batteries bare these 10 years ahead. So to be competitive now, a battery chemistry bmust be either 10times cheaper (rough estimate) or fill in a niche application (high density, very stable). A battery that is just five times as cheap will never catch up to the learnings of li ion manufacturing.
      - chrispeel 6y ago
        "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." I.e. it seems a bit bold to say A battery that is just five times as cheap will never catch up to the learnings of li ion manufacturing.
      - skohan 6y ago
        But that calculation is affected by the commodity prices of lithium as well. If demand for batteries increases (i.e. if most people started driving electric cars) then a technology could go from 5 to 10 times as cheap very quickly
  - wlesieutre 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      I was curious as to relative abundance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... 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 6y ago
        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-much-salt-ocean https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/what-makes-ocean-salty-and-how...
        danw1979 6y ago
        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.
        frandroid 6y ago
        "Thanks for pointing out this mistake. Since we currently have no quantity surveyor, we would like to hand over control of the Planetary Quantity Survey repository to you. This is an open source project with no pay which requires 80 hours of thankless work a week. Good luck!"
- pvaldes 6y ago
  > would still be a great success if sodium-ion is cheaper to manufacture Either if would be slightly more expensive, the environmental and logistic consequences (not depending on a few places in a few countries to mine it, not needing to import the raw materials from another continent) would be also a noticeable factor.
hmwhy 6y ago
To be fair, that doesn't appear to be a quote and the last few words of the sentence you quoted is important: > ... offering a comparable energy capacity and cycling ability to some lithium-ion batteries already on the market. Having said that, it seems they do claim in the paper that the performance of their "battery" (really, they only tested a single cathode composition) is "competitive to the commercial LiFePO4-graphite" base on extrapolation of their lab results "to practical large format cells". I feel funny about that sort of extrapolation in an engineering context, but I'm not an electrochemist and also not a chemical engineer, and I have only skimmed through the abstract, introductions, and conclusions of the paper; so take this comment with a grain of salt. Edit: typo. Also, I'm not out to trash the work in case my comment comes across as being harsh—marketing aside (which is, sadly, pretty common in high-impact journals), it does seem like a step forward.
- wccrawford 6y ago
  The article used the word "some" multiple times, which is why I began to wonder about it. Weasel words are kind of a trigger for me.
  - hmwhy 6y ago
    On a personal level, I tend to agree with you because of some traumatic experiences with collaborators in the past. But I think there is at least one valid reason for using imprecise terms in scientific journalism: it makes the content more accessible.

Reason077 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.
- slfnflctd 6y ago
  I've been waiting for competition in this space to heat up for about full decade now. Around the start of the 2010s I was doing a ton of research, and it seemed like a big win was just around the corner... somehow it seems farther away now. I really hope something - anything - makes it out of the lab at a market-busting price point soon, it might actually give me a chance to restart some projects that have been collecting dust on the shelf for way too long.
  - choeger 6y ago
    The thing is that li ion batteries bare these 10 years ahead. So to be competitive now, a battery chemistry bmust be either 10times cheaper (rough estimate) or fill in a niche application (high density, very stable). A battery that is just five times as cheap will never catch up to the learnings of li ion manufacturing.
    - chrispeel 6y ago
      "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." I.e. it seems a bit bold to say A battery that is just five times as cheap will never catch up to the learnings of li ion manufacturing.
    - skohan 6y ago
      But that calculation is affected by the commodity prices of lithium as well. If demand for batteries increases (i.e. if most people started driving electric cars) then a technology could go from 5 to 10 times as cheap very quickly
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    I was curious as to relative abundance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... 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 6y ago
      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-much-salt-ocean https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/what-makes-ocean-salty-and-how...
      - danw1979 6y ago
        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.
        frandroid 6y ago
        "Thanks for pointing out this mistake. Since we currently have no quantity surveyor, we would like to hand over control of the Planetary Quantity Survey repository to you. This is an open source project with no pay which requires 80 hours of thankless work a week. Good luck!"
pvaldes 6y ago
> would still be a great success if sodium-ion is cheaper to manufacture Either if would be slightly more expensive, the environmental and logistic consequences (not depending on a few places in a few countries to mine it, not needing to import the raw materials from another continent) would be also a noticeable factor.

hmwhy 6y ago

To be fair, that doesn't appear to be a quote and the last few words of the sentence you quoted is important: > ... offering a comparable energy capacity and cycling ability to some lithium-ion batteries already on the market. Having said that, it seems they do claim in the paper that the performance of their "battery" (really, they only tested a single cathode composition) is "competitive to the commercial LiFePO4-graphite" base on extrapolation of their lab results "to practical large format cells". I feel funny about that sort of extrapolation in an engineering context, but I'm not an electrochemist and also not a chemical engineer, and I have only skimmed through the abstract, introductions, and conclusions of the paper; so take this comment with a grain of salt. Edit: typo. Also, I'm not out to trash the work in case my comment comes across as being harsh—marketing aside (which is, sadly, pretty common in high-impact journals), it does seem like a step forward.

wccrawford 6y ago
The article used the word "some" multiple times, which is why I began to wonder about it. Weasel words are kind of a trigger for me.
- hmwhy 6y ago
  On a personal level, I tend to agree with you because of some traumatic experiences with collaborators in the past. But I think there is at least one valid reason for using imprecise terms in scientific journalism: it makes the content more accessible.