10 ms·

Na-S Battery: Low-cost with four times the capacity of lithium

MonkeyClub 4y ago
Seems to be a legitimate advance in a long-disregarded battery tech, I’d be very happy if this ends up reducing lithium mining.
- danuker 4y ago
  Indeed, and it might also drive down prices. Sodium and sulphur are much more abundant than Lithium (1150x and 260x respectively). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Does the 1150 take into account all the oceans full of NaCl? It sounds a little low.
  - ddulaney 4y ago
    Sodium and sulphur are very cheap and easy to get, but not because of this. Sulphur is a byproduct of lots of different industrial processes, usually oil refining. Sodium is most commonly extracted from seawater. Frequency of elements in Earth's crust is a pretty poor approximation for how easy they are to mine.
  - flavius29663 4y ago
    This wiki page has a surprising graph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust#/media/File:Elemental_abundances.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... The "rare earths" are actually just as common as Si. It just shows we won't be running out of them anytime soon, it's just a matter of finding ways to extract them.
    - squarefoot 4y ago
      Although, by looking at the places where they are more abundant, I wouldn't be too optimist, at least with the current geopolitical climate. https://www.statista.com/statistics/277268/rare-earth-reserves-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/277268/rare-earth-reserv...
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Si is the symbol for silicon, which is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust (after oxygen.) The REEs are certainly not as abundant as that. Si is 270,000 ppm; cerium is 60 ppm.
      - flavius29663 4y ago
        You're right, I'm dumb, the graph is 0 at 10^6 Si. So rare earths are 1 million times more rare than Si. It's similar to copper and Nickel though
        pfdietz 4y ago
        Not a million times more rare, more like ~10,000 times. Also, Ni is more abundant in the oceanic crust than the continental crust. Lots of Ni in mantle rocks (peridotite is about 0.1% Ni.) It's interesting comparing the abundance of copper (and even more so, tin) and iron. It was a huge transition in resource availability when the iron age began.
    - ojbyrne 4y ago
      I’m not sure how you’re interpreting that graph, because Si (Silicon) and Na are orders of magnitude more common than the rare earths. You might have missed that it’s a logarithmic scale.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    Is the material that ends up in the cell a significant part of the cost? If steel was free, ICE cars could be dozens of dollars cheaper than they are. I guess material costs are a much bigger factor in batteries, but in many other products is so low that "much bigger" could still be tiny.
- hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
  Yes. The electrification movement isn’t any “green” if you take into account the impact of current battery technology. PS: the impact of battery technology - I’m not only talking about mining but the entire cycle: usable life, reverse logistics, disposal and recycling, dealing w/ water and soil contamination.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    Ah yes. Digging for coal or gas or oil, fracking, etc: just fine Mining for (significant less amount of) lithium or other metals: "oh look they're ruining the environment" As most discussions go, they're heavily biased towards the status quo
    - willnonya 4y ago
      Both of those can be bad at once you know... A lithium mine is much more devastating to the environment than an oil well or franking. That doesn't mean either of these are really good options despite what either side wants to pretend.
      - KyeRussell 4y ago
        This sort of both-sidesing doesn’t further the conversation at all. Do you really think the person you’re replying to doesn’t know that mining Lithium isn’t without its environmental costs? The person you’re replying to quite correctly notes that mining Lithium is an improvement over extracting coal, oil, and gas. The term “green” is so nebulous snd ill-defined that it’s not worth talking about. The best thing humanity can do for the earth is clearly to remove ourselves from it. Anything less than that is compromise. Sure. But sitting here saying “there’s no such thing as ethical consumption” doesn’t really get us anywhere.
      - MonkeyClub 4y ago
        Precisely; it’s not big oil propaganda to understand the environmental effects of lithium mining, just as it’s not lithium propaganda to acknowledge the equivalent consequences of the oil industry on the environment. But if we get to have a way to move at super-human speeds (ie > 5 km/h walking and > 30 km/h running), cheaply and without environmentally detrimental consequences, that’d be great :) (Fellow cyclists, I know, cycling is an excellent solution for single-person small- and mid-range movement. I’m thinking here of mass transportation and goods transportation, where it’d be hard to use cycle-powered lorries across continents.)
- supportlocal4h 4y ago
  Imagine a desalination process funded in part by producing battery-grade sodium. All you practical people who wait until there is real world manufacturing promise are missing out on the pleasure of wild imagination.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    Imagination is great, but there's a blurry line between "imagine a thing and make it happen" and "tell happy stories instead of working". One belongs in science journals; the other belongs in Astounding Stories. Both have their place, and there's even some overlap, but it's no surprise that grumpiness occurs when the conversation crosses that blurry line too far (in either direction).
  - marcus_holmes 4y ago
    "we're all doomed" "wait, there's a new battery tech that could solve some of the long-standing problems with moving to a clean-energy abundant civilisation, and yesterday they achieved fusion ignition for the first time" "bah, these are all rubbish and will never make any difference, we're still all doomed"
benreesman 4y ago
I’m a layman as concerns batteries, but I’m old enough, just like photovoltaics, for the prevailing view to be: this is at the asymptote, it’s not getting any better. I’m glad some people decided not to listen to that bollocks.
- Aardwolf 4y ago
  For solar panels I agree, there's a hard limit of how much energy per area the sun itself gives, and how much efficiency you can physically get out of that. For batteries: biological creatures store more energy more densily, yet safely, so there's still headroom.
  - TheIronYuppie 4y ago
    I think the general thinking is that cost is going to be the determining factor for PV. It it gets to be cheaper than paper, for ex, you could just put it everywhere. But there are still lots of wins - we’re only in the low 20s for efficiency and mostly catching visible light. There’s also environmental, long life, etc ways to improve as well.
    - fps-hero 4y ago
      Solar is by far the cheapest form of energy by a significant margin. It is already at the point where it makes sense to put it everywhere, and have concentrated large scale generation. For solar to win, we need to solve energy storage, or perhaps the energy distribution problem. There is no amount of solar which will give you power 24 hours in a day in a single location. Energy storage is the best short term solution. If we can capture peak solar generation and move that energy to the peak demand period, we can have a serious discussion about moving away from coal for baseload generation. It won’t be needed during the day, and the demand periods covered by storage. However, for solar to really win, we need to think bigger with our energy distribution networks. Think of a global scale distribution network, like an internet for electricity. If you can send an IP packet from your computer across the world, why not energy? With a sufficiently large interconnected global scale network of renewable generators, energy storage becomes less important. We don’t need gas pipelines, we need longitudinal and latitudinal HV distribution networks.
kennydude 4y ago
This would be great also if, during damage situations they are less harmful than Lithium Ion batteries (which cause very hot, self sustaining fires for hours and hours!)
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  I would think any dry cell would have this as a problem? If you stuff a kWh into a box and get it back out without adding anything, there is a kWh in that box, and I think all these sorts of reactions proceed faster at higher temperatures, so wouldn't runaway always be a possibility?
- ajross 4y ago
  This is all FUD, and I wish people would stop repeating it. Battery fires in vehicles (which I assume is what you're talking about) are objectively safer than gasoline fires. They just are. It's true though that they have to be fought differently, because they can't be extinguished by flushing the fuel away as you can for liquid fires. So the "hours and hours" bit is sorta true, I guess. But having to keep people away from a battery fire for a while while you hose it down is an annoyance, not a safety concern. In any case the battery under discussion is a molten electrolyte thing intended for grid storage, not vehicles.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    > This is all FUD, and I wish people would stop repeating it. Battery fires in vehicles (which I assume is what you're talking about) are objectively safer than gasoline fires. They just are. They just happen way more often, petrol tank is smaller tucked in usually somewhere in the back of the car, VS battery cell where just puncture can start a fire where gasoline can "just" leak without catching fire. Althought I imagine chance for that grows a lot with old cars, once they start to rot from corrosion
    - ajross 4y ago
      > They just happen way more often I don't think that's true either? Obviously the FUD angle means that it Makes Big News when EVs burn. But gasoline cars burn all the time. Look, if there's evidence for battery safety issues then let's discuss it. But there isn't. There are millions of EVs on the roads now. Can we even name one accident where someone was injured by an EV fire? It's just not there. This is wrong. What you're repeating is wrong.
gumboza 4y ago
Time will tell. All new battery technologies solve one problem but create two more. Edit: I'm not necessarily talking about technology problems. There are geopolitical and environmental problems too :)
- qwertox 4y ago
  https://www.energy-storage.news/basf-takes-sodium-sulfur-battery-storage-to-south-korea-after-successful-pilot-project/ https://www.energy-storage.news/basf-takes-sodium-sulfur-bat...
willnonya 4y ago
While I welcome this advancement it still seems like a solution to the wrong solution for another problem.
- SamBam 4y ago
  Very unclear what you mean. Large-scale, cheap, safe, and environmental energy storage is a huge issue that is nowhere near solved yet, so more solutions are absolutely a good thing.
waynesonfire 4y ago
capacity is but one of many characteristics of a successfully battery technology. it's important to consider just about every possible factor, capacity, power density, charge and discharge rate, lifespan / shelf life, safety, voltage range, temperature ranges while charging, discharging, cycle count. And, also, the performance of these attributes under various temperature profiles. This list is far from exhaustive, I'm not a battery expert but just something I came up with in a few minutes of thought. So, gtfo with your capacity claim. Every few months a battery break-through article comes out. I've become de-sensitize to this type of news.
- simmerup 4y ago
  What is your comment actually adding?
microjim 4y ago
Would love to hear from domain experts here. Reading the article one finds that they only created very small cathodes rather than anything close to a 'consumer sized' battery. (The full text of the paper is available for free at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202206828 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202206828)
- jpm_sd 4y ago
  It's just more science by press release. Wake me up when there's a real manufacturing process developed.
- scythe 4y ago
  I'm not a battery expert, but I have looked into Na-S before. While it's a great rhetorical bludgeon in arguments about what batteries can do in theory — we'll never run out of sodium or sulfur — actual costs of Na-S installations are consistently much higher than lithium or other battery types. For example, this review cites a present system cost of over $400/kWh: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/13/3307 https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/13/3307 A new scientific development can be cool, but it won't directly reduce costs, since it's not actually an industrial process. A lower operating temperature might simplify construction. But all that remains to be seen. EDIT: if you read the original paper in TFA you will find that molybdenum, an extremely rare metal, is key to the cathode, though only at 1.2% by weight. Interpretation unclear.
- app4soft 4y ago
  > Reading the article one finds that they only created very small cathodes rather than anything close to a 'consumer sized' battery There are few articles on 'consumer sized' 18650 sodium-ion (Na-S, Na-ion) battery (aka NIB): October 2019: Developing O3 type layered oxide cathode and its application in 18650 commercial type Na-ion batteries[0] May 2022: First 18650-format Na-ion cells aging investigation: A degradation mechanism study[1] August 2022: Remaining useful life prediction for 18650 sodium-ion batteries based on incremental capacity analysis[2] [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336562138_Developing_O3_type_layered_oxide_cathode_and_its_application_in_18650_commercial_type_Na-ion_batteries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336562138_Developin... [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359078973_First_18650-format_Na-ion_cells_aging_investigation_A_degradation_mechanism_study https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359078973_First_186... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362754837_Remaining_useful_life_prediction_for_18650_sodium-ion_batteries_based_on_incremental_capacity_analysis https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362754837_Remaining...
jojobas 4y ago
Li-S is already 2.5x the energy density of TNT. Before you say "petrol", petrol is typically not carried in the form petrol/oxygen fizz and its energy density is therefore zero.
- foxhill 4y ago
  likely because the logistics of handling and utilising an energy source that can materialise the entirety of its stored energy instantly has some safety concerns. requiring air is not a limitation, it’s a feature.
  - jojobas 4y ago
    I'm saying I'd rather not be near a 100kW-h Na-S battery. Current Li-Po batteries require quite some shielding at tiny a fraction of the energy density if you don't want to burn.
- gruturo 4y ago
  TNT has actually pretty low energy density - lower than chocolate chip cookies if I remember correctly. It's only used because of its ability to deliver it all in one go - something cookies lack. Energy density alone is a fairly inadequate metric to decide how dangerous some material is, and what precautions to take handling and transporting it.
  - jojobas 4y ago
    Just as petrol, cookies have energy density of zero until mixed with oxygen. Just like TNT, or more like black powder, batteries have all components required to yield energy in one enclosure, which is why there are battery explosion videos and no cookie explosion videos.
cstross 4y ago
The key word that's almost submerged in the article is molten. Like previous sodium-sulphur batteries this one relies on a molten salt electrolyte, meaning you won't see it in your phone or laptop any time soon! However, as it's being developed with the idea of grid-scale smoothing/backup, that's much less of a problem. (The square-cube law means that as you increase the volume of your molten salt cell, the surface area grows more slowly -- and thermal losses scale with surface area, so really big cells are cheaper to maintain at operating temperature.)
- koliber 4y ago
  That also jumped out at me when I read it. However, later on they state that this reaction works at room temperature: > Using a simple pyrolysis process and carbon-based electrodes to improve the reactivity of sulphur and the reversibility of reactions between sulphur and sodium, the researchers’ battery has shaken off its formerly sluggish reputation, exhibiting super-high capacity and ultra-long life at room temperature. This is confusing. Can someone make some sense of this?
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    > exhibiting super-high capacity and ultra-long life at room temperature. Maybe this is just bad writing? The battery (at operating temp) has high capacity, and (at room temp) can be stored for a long time? The wikipedia page indicates that it is normal to store charged molten salt batteries at room temp when not being used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery
    - CuriousCosmic 4y ago
      I think it might literally mean "operates at room temperature" as in 25-35 degrees C. Not really sure how it works but there seems to be a distinction between high, intermediate, and room temperature for the Na-S battery's operating conditions. Quote from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21663831.2022.2092428 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21663831.2022.2... 1.1. History of Na-S batteries Research on Na-S batteries originated in the 1960s, with the first research focused on High-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur (HT-Na/S) batteries, which operate around 300–350 °C. A molten Na anode (melting point=98 °C), a molten sulfur cathode (melting point = 118 °C) and ceramic β'-Al2O3 as solid electrolyte are assembled into the HT-Na/S batteries [11]. HT-Na/S batteries avoid the dendrite problem and have high electrical conductivity. However, it also has the defects of high working temperature, high risk, low energy density and high operation cost. And then, the Intermediate-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur (IMT-Na/S) batteries were innovated in the 1970s and operate between 120–300 °C. The IMT-Na/S batteries also eliminated the dendrite problem, but the electronic conductivity and the utilization of sulfur also decreased. Researchers have been intensively investigating Room-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur (RT-Na/S) batteries, which operate around 25 °C-35 °C. RT-Na/S batteries can completely convert S8 to Na2S, so they have a high theoretical energy density (1274 Wh kg−1)
megaman821 4y ago
These scientific advances in batteries are cool, but I don't take them as a specific indicator of what is coming. It is a numbers game, if there are 1000 scientific advances maybe 1 or 2 will survive the gauntlet and make it into manufacturing in the next 10 years. It seems reasonable that there will be battery options that cost 50% as much and others that have 2x greater energy density in the near future. That seems great to me. Batteries will be viable and economical across most storage needs expect for aviation, shipping and seasonal grid storage.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  Same. If you follow articles like this you’ll be constantly wondering what happened to “x”. (“Graphene can do everything except get out of the lab”)
- RGamma 4y ago
  Specifically for grid storage I'd like to see more attention given to gravity batteries [0], the compressed liquid type. Recently saw a video (in German, [1]) in which there was back-of-the-envelope calculation that a gravity battery built by hydraulically raising a cylindrical landmass with 1km diameter by 500 meters stores about 2TWh (recent yearly gross electricity consumption of Germany is 560TWh). It's such a simple concept! Also, they are looking for investors: https://heindl-energy.com/ https://heindl-energy.com/ [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnomwGCBNAE https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnomwGCBNAE
  - AndrewDucker 4y ago
    That is an obscenely large cylinder. And a large height to raise it!
  - amalcon 4y ago
    Pumped-storage hydro (the cheapest and generally most practical gravity battery) is currently responsible for almost all grid-scale energy storage worldwide. I don't think it's fair to say it's not getting attention. What's not getting attention is the use of solids for this. The main reasons are that you'd like to re-use most of the infrastructure of the hydroelectric dam you wanted anyway, and that liquids make for simpler engineering in these cases.
Robotbeat 4y ago
They don’t mention the actual specific energy of the completed cells in Wh/kg. Also, “four times of WHAT?” They need to compare like-to-like, which would mean comparing to an equivalent Li-S cells. Li-S cells usually have much higher specific energy than regular lithium ion. I doubt these cells are better, considering sodium is heavier than lithium. The highest lithium ion cells you can get now are Amperium cells at 390Wh/kg, plus the metal anode Licerion cells at over 400Wh/kg. That’s not counting lithium sulfur which can get to 650Wh/kg (but are still stuck in the lab).
- deng 4y ago
  They say the charge capacity is 1017 mAh/g. That is about four times the value of a typical (good!) Li-Ion battery.
  - bjarneh 4y ago
    Isn't that quite close to the magic number which makes electric planes a viable option? 1 kW = 1 kg; Musk said something about that in a podcast I think...
    - termain 4y ago
      That's specific power, not specific energy. Do you mean 1 kW*r/kg?
      - bjarneh 4y ago
        Yes of course, I meant to say 1 kW·h = 1 kg; but I'm not certain if I remember correctly now; I could be off by a factor of 10 I guess. It was either 1 kg battery weight = 1 kW·h, or perhaps he said 10 kW·h had to be contained in a 1 kg battery to allow all types of air travel. I think the 100 kW·h Tesla batteries found in the Model S/X weigh around 750 kg; so I guess electric air travel is still difficult unless a battery breakthrough happens; at least in terms of weight.
  - danw1979 4y ago
sylware 4y ago
How do you process them once they run out of reasonably efficient cycles? Reconditioning facilities? wastes? etc?
- Tagbert 4y ago
  Considering the main ingredients are sodium and sulfur, recycling should not be a major problem. Those are commonly used elements and not particularly toxic. This question is always asked about EV batteries. Their recycling is something that is being developed but is still in prototype phase. Actual production scale recycling is not feasible yet because the number of retired EV batteries is too small to be efficiently recycled. That will eventually change but since EV batteries are generally lasting for a decade or more, it will take several years before we start seeing significant numbers needing to be recycled. I would expect that the same story would apply to these batteries if they are deployed.
  - sylware 4y ago
    "recycling should not be a major problem", well, this is where more details would be more than welcome.
    - Tagbert 4y ago
      Since they are still developing this as tech, I am not surprised if they are not really discussing how to recycle it. Recycling would depend on how much of this ends up getting built, how much value there is in the components, and whether there is a cost/risk of not recycling. If only a small number are ever built, then recycling isn't much of a concern. There doesn't seem to be anything in here that is radically different than other batteries and the components are less toxic than many.
m3kw9 4y ago
With batteries is that there are way more factors than just capacity. You need thermal run way, cold/hot weather perf, heat generated, charge time, numb cycles before capacity is 80%, weight power ratio, scalability and cost
- thehappypm 4y ago
  Some applications are easier than others. Grid storage, for example, can be in climate controlled warehouses, do optimal charging cycles to maximize longevity, don’t care about weight, etc.
ncann 4y ago
Sorry, I can't resist the urge to repost this classic comment on a thread about new battery technology: Dear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because: [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale. [ ] it will be too expensive for users. [ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles. [ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels. [ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures. [ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable. [ ] it has too short of a lifetime. [ ] its charge rate is too slow. [ ] its materials are too toxic. [ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode. [ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care. [ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then. [ ] by this time it ships li-ion advances will match it. [ ] your claims are lies.
- Tade0 4y ago
  I have a very simple criterion: Do they have a production process designed for this new technology? That's the final step to commercialization and is often the barrier that prevents new chemistries from entering the market.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  From a young age I've combed the shelves at public libraries and found handbooks on battery technology. Often 1/3 of the book is devoted to ordinary batteries and the other 2/3 are devoted to "reserve batteries" which are able to deliver a high power density for a short time to power a missile or something like that. There was a huge amount of research on those and I think it's easier to make a battery work if it doesn't have to last very long. NiMH batteries seemed to come out of nowhere. I remember Sony licensing the technology for "InfoLithium" batteries that eventually took over the world. The market for batteries is bigger than it ever was. Grid scale batteries relax many constraints: molten salt batteries might be practical there. The South Africans thought this kind of battery might be relevant for cars in the late 1970's and 1980's https://www.afrik21.africa/en/south-africa-the-zebra-salt-battery-suitable-for-storing-renewables/ https://www.afrik21.africa/en/south-africa-the-zebra-salt-ba... and it might be again with electric cars legitmized and if oil is out of reach.
dreamcompiler 4y ago
Sodium-sulfur batteries are already in use for grid storage [0] [1]. They're large and they have to be kept hot, so they won't work for mobile applications. This article seems to be describing one that works at room temperature. [0] https://www.energy-storage.news/uae-integrates-648mwh-of-sodium-sulfur-batteries-in-one-swoop/ https://www.energy-storage.news/uae-integrates-648mwh-of-sod... [1] https://www.bestmag.co.uk/worlds-largest-sodium-sulphur-ess-deployed-japan/ https://www.bestmag.co.uk/worlds-largest-sodium-sulphur-ess-...
Tade0 4y ago
I wonder how does it stack up against non-flow zinc-bromide batteries, which apparently are already being produced and are aiming for the stationary storage market: https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/09/30/gelion-unveils-battery-manufacturing-facility-in-sydney/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/09/30/gelion-unve... The 2MWh/yr plant is very small, but reportedly it's a repurposed lead-acid facility because the production process is similar enough.
mikeytown2 4y ago
Let me know when I can buy 30kwh worth of energy storage so I can compare it to Lifepo4 costs [1] [1] $10,500 https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-ll-lithium-batteries-kit-48v-100ah-x-6-30-72kwh-6-server-rack-batteries-with-pre-assembled-enclosed-rack-with-door-wheelsac/ https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-ll-lithium-batteries-kit-48v-...
- aidenn0 4y ago
  LiFePO4 batteries are really magical; mostly made of easy-to-find materials, good density, long lifetime, hard to make explode.
  - mikeytown2 4y ago
    LiFeYPO4 Have a wide temperature range of -45° to 85° C. Uses Yttriumbut cost more
- driverdan 4y ago
  Those are the more expensive packs with LCDs. The cheaper, simpler packs are only $9000 and just as good.
alex_young 4y ago
4 x the energy density, but 8 x the mass. These will be heavy batteries. Kinda defeats the point.
- inamberclad 4y ago
  Good for plenty of applications, such as power plants and renewables.
wankle 4y ago
I was never good with chemistry, the battery sounded icky to make. I'd bet on the Iron Edison battery or the iron rust battery instead.

Seems to be a legitimate advance in a long-disregarded battery tech, I’d be very happy if this ends up reducing lithium mining.

danuker 4y ago
Indeed, and it might also drive down prices. Sodium and sulphur are much more abundant than Lithium (1150x and 260x respectively). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Does the 1150 take into account all the oceans full of NaCl? It sounds a little low.
- ddulaney 4y ago
  Sodium and sulphur are very cheap and easy to get, but not because of this. Sulphur is a byproduct of lots of different industrial processes, usually oil refining. Sodium is most commonly extracted from seawater. Frequency of elements in Earth's crust is a pretty poor approximation for how easy they are to mine.
- flavius29663 4y ago
  This wiki page has a surprising graph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust#/media/File:Elemental_abundances.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... The "rare earths" are actually just as common as Si. It just shows we won't be running out of them anytime soon, it's just a matter of finding ways to extract them.
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    Although, by looking at the places where they are more abundant, I wouldn't be too optimist, at least with the current geopolitical climate. https://www.statista.com/statistics/277268/rare-earth-reserves-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/277268/rare-earth-reserv...
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Si is the symbol for silicon, which is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust (after oxygen.) The REEs are certainly not as abundant as that. Si is 270,000 ppm; cerium is 60 ppm.
    - flavius29663 4y ago
      You're right, I'm dumb, the graph is 0 at 10^6 Si. So rare earths are 1 million times more rare than Si. It's similar to copper and Nickel though
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        Not a million times more rare, more like ~10,000 times. Also, Ni is more abundant in the oceanic crust than the continental crust. Lots of Ni in mantle rocks (peridotite is about 0.1% Ni.) It's interesting comparing the abundance of copper (and even more so, tin) and iron. It was a huge transition in resource availability when the iron age began.
  - ojbyrne 4y ago
    I’m not sure how you’re interpreting that graph, because Si (Silicon) and Na are orders of magnitude more common than the rare earths. You might have missed that it’s a logarithmic scale.
- usrusr 4y ago
  Is the material that ends up in the cell a significant part of the cost? If steel was free, ICE cars could be dozens of dollars cheaper than they are. I guess material costs are a much bigger factor in batteries, but in many other products is so low that "much bigger" could still be tiny.
hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
Yes. The electrification movement isn’t any “green” if you take into account the impact of current battery technology. PS: the impact of battery technology - I’m not only talking about mining but the entire cycle: usable life, reverse logistics, disposal and recycling, dealing w/ water and soil contamination.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  Ah yes. Digging for coal or gas or oil, fracking, etc: just fine Mining for (significant less amount of) lithium or other metals: "oh look they're ruining the environment" As most discussions go, they're heavily biased towards the status quo
  - willnonya 4y ago
    Both of those can be bad at once you know... A lithium mine is much more devastating to the environment than an oil well or franking. That doesn't mean either of these are really good options despite what either side wants to pretend.
    - KyeRussell 4y ago
      This sort of both-sidesing doesn’t further the conversation at all. Do you really think the person you’re replying to doesn’t know that mining Lithium isn’t without its environmental costs? The person you’re replying to quite correctly notes that mining Lithium is an improvement over extracting coal, oil, and gas. The term “green” is so nebulous snd ill-defined that it’s not worth talking about. The best thing humanity can do for the earth is clearly to remove ourselves from it. Anything less than that is compromise. Sure. But sitting here saying “there’s no such thing as ethical consumption” doesn’t really get us anywhere.
    - MonkeyClub 4y ago
      Precisely; it’s not big oil propaganda to understand the environmental effects of lithium mining, just as it’s not lithium propaganda to acknowledge the equivalent consequences of the oil industry on the environment. But if we get to have a way to move at super-human speeds (ie > 5 km/h walking and > 30 km/h running), cheaply and without environmentally detrimental consequences, that’d be great :) (Fellow cyclists, I know, cycling is an excellent solution for single-person small- and mid-range movement. I’m thinking here of mass transportation and goods transportation, where it’d be hard to use cycle-powered lorries across continents.)
supportlocal4h 4y ago
Imagine a desalination process funded in part by producing battery-grade sodium. All you practical people who wait until there is real world manufacturing promise are missing out on the pleasure of wild imagination.
- jfengel 4y ago
  Imagination is great, but there's a blurry line between "imagine a thing and make it happen" and "tell happy stories instead of working". One belongs in science journals; the other belongs in Astounding Stories. Both have their place, and there's even some overlap, but it's no surprise that grumpiness occurs when the conversation crosses that blurry line too far (in either direction).
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  "we're all doomed" "wait, there's a new battery tech that could solve some of the long-standing problems with moving to a clean-energy abundant civilisation, and yesterday they achieved fusion ignition for the first time" "bah, these are all rubbish and will never make any difference, we're still all doomed"

benreesman 4y ago

I’m a layman as concerns batteries, but I’m old enough, just like photovoltaics, for the prevailing view to be: this is at the asymptote, it’s not getting any better. I’m glad some people decided not to listen to that bollocks.

Aardwolf 4y ago
For solar panels I agree, there's a hard limit of how much energy per area the sun itself gives, and how much efficiency you can physically get out of that. For batteries: biological creatures store more energy more densily, yet safely, so there's still headroom.
- TheIronYuppie 4y ago
  I think the general thinking is that cost is going to be the determining factor for PV. It it gets to be cheaper than paper, for ex, you could just put it everywhere. But there are still lots of wins - we’re only in the low 20s for efficiency and mostly catching visible light. There’s also environmental, long life, etc ways to improve as well.
  - fps-hero 4y ago
    Solar is by far the cheapest form of energy by a significant margin. It is already at the point where it makes sense to put it everywhere, and have concentrated large scale generation. For solar to win, we need to solve energy storage, or perhaps the energy distribution problem. There is no amount of solar which will give you power 24 hours in a day in a single location. Energy storage is the best short term solution. If we can capture peak solar generation and move that energy to the peak demand period, we can have a serious discussion about moving away from coal for baseload generation. It won’t be needed during the day, and the demand periods covered by storage. However, for solar to really win, we need to think bigger with our energy distribution networks. Think of a global scale distribution network, like an internet for electricity. If you can send an IP packet from your computer across the world, why not energy? With a sufficiently large interconnected global scale network of renewable generators, energy storage becomes less important. We don’t need gas pipelines, we need longitudinal and latitudinal HV distribution networks.

kennydude 4y ago

This would be great also if, during damage situations they are less harmful than Lithium Ion batteries (which cause very hot, self sustaining fires for hours and hours!)

galangalalgol 4y ago
I would think any dry cell would have this as a problem? If you stuff a kWh into a box and get it back out without adding anything, there is a kWh in that box, and I think all these sorts of reactions proceed faster at higher temperatures, so wouldn't runaway always be a possibility?
ajross 4y ago
This is all FUD, and I wish people would stop repeating it. Battery fires in vehicles (which I assume is what you're talking about) are objectively safer than gasoline fires. They just are. It's true though that they have to be fought differently, because they can't be extinguished by flushing the fuel away as you can for liquid fires. So the "hours and hours" bit is sorta true, I guess. But having to keep people away from a battery fire for a while while you hose it down is an annoyance, not a safety concern. In any case the battery under discussion is a molten electrolyte thing intended for grid storage, not vehicles.
- ilyt 4y ago
  > This is all FUD, and I wish people would stop repeating it. Battery fires in vehicles (which I assume is what you're talking about) are objectively safer than gasoline fires. They just are. They just happen way more often, petrol tank is smaller tucked in usually somewhere in the back of the car, VS battery cell where just puncture can start a fire where gasoline can "just" leak without catching fire. Althought I imagine chance for that grows a lot with old cars, once they start to rot from corrosion
  - ajross 4y ago
    > They just happen way more often I don't think that's true either? Obviously the FUD angle means that it Makes Big News when EVs burn. But gasoline cars burn all the time. Look, if there's evidence for battery safety issues then let's discuss it. But there isn't. There are millions of EVs on the roads now. Can we even name one accident where someone was injured by an EV fire? It's just not there. This is wrong. What you're repeating is wrong.

gumboza 4y ago

Time will tell. All new battery technologies solve one problem but create two more. Edit: I'm not necessarily talking about technology problems. There are geopolitical and environmental problems too :)

qwertox 4y ago
https://www.energy-storage.news/basf-takes-sodium-sulfur-battery-storage-to-south-korea-after-successful-pilot-project/ https://www.energy-storage.news/basf-takes-sodium-sulfur-bat...

willnonya 4y ago

While I welcome this advancement it still seems like a solution to the wrong solution for another problem.

SamBam 4y ago
Very unclear what you mean. Large-scale, cheap, safe, and environmental energy storage is a huge issue that is nowhere near solved yet, so more solutions are absolutely a good thing.

waynesonfire 4y ago

capacity is but one of many characteristics of a successfully battery technology. it's important to consider just about every possible factor, capacity, power density, charge and discharge rate, lifespan / shelf life, safety, voltage range, temperature ranges while charging, discharging, cycle count. And, also, the performance of these attributes under various temperature profiles. This list is far from exhaustive, I'm not a battery expert but just something I came up with in a few minutes of thought. So, gtfo with your capacity claim. Every few months a battery break-through article comes out. I've become de-sensitize to this type of news.

simmerup 4y ago
What is your comment actually adding?

microjim 4y ago

Would love to hear from domain experts here. Reading the article one finds that they only created very small cathodes rather than anything close to a 'consumer sized' battery. (The full text of the paper is available for free at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202206828 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202206828)

jpm_sd 4y ago
It's just more science by press release. Wake me up when there's a real manufacturing process developed.
scythe 4y ago
I'm not a battery expert, but I have looked into Na-S before. While it's a great rhetorical bludgeon in arguments about what batteries can do in theory — we'll never run out of sodium or sulfur — actual costs of Na-S installations are consistently much higher than lithium or other battery types. For example, this review cites a present system cost of over $400/kWh: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/13/3307 https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/13/3307 A new scientific development can be cool, but it won't directly reduce costs, since it's not actually an industrial process. A lower operating temperature might simplify construction. But all that remains to be seen. EDIT: if you read the original paper in TFA you will find that molybdenum, an extremely rare metal, is key to the cathode, though only at 1.2% by weight. Interpretation unclear.
app4soft 4y ago
> Reading the article one finds that they only created very small cathodes rather than anything close to a 'consumer sized' battery There are few articles on 'consumer sized' 18650 sodium-ion (Na-S, Na-ion) battery (aka NIB): October 2019: Developing O3 type layered oxide cathode and its application in 18650 commercial type Na-ion batteries[0] May 2022: First 18650-format Na-ion cells aging investigation: A degradation mechanism study[1] August 2022: Remaining useful life prediction for 18650 sodium-ion batteries based on incremental capacity analysis[2] [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336562138_Developing_O3_type_layered_oxide_cathode_and_its_application_in_18650_commercial_type_Na-ion_batteries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336562138_Developin... [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359078973_First_18650-format_Na-ion_cells_aging_investigation_A_degradation_mechanism_study https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359078973_First_186... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362754837_Remaining_useful_life_prediction_for_18650_sodium-ion_batteries_based_on_incremental_capacity_analysis https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362754837_Remaining...

jojobas 4y ago

Li-S is already 2.5x the energy density of TNT. Before you say "petrol", petrol is typically not carried in the form petrol/oxygen fizz and its energy density is therefore zero.

foxhill 4y ago
likely because the logistics of handling and utilising an energy source that can materialise the entirety of its stored energy instantly has some safety concerns. requiring air is not a limitation, it’s a feature.
- jojobas 4y ago
  I'm saying I'd rather not be near a 100kW-h Na-S battery. Current Li-Po batteries require quite some shielding at tiny a fraction of the energy density if you don't want to burn.
gruturo 4y ago
TNT has actually pretty low energy density - lower than chocolate chip cookies if I remember correctly. It's only used because of its ability to deliver it all in one go - something cookies lack. Energy density alone is a fairly inadequate metric to decide how dangerous some material is, and what precautions to take handling and transporting it.
- jojobas 4y ago
  Just as petrol, cookies have energy density of zero until mixed with oxygen. Just like TNT, or more like black powder, batteries have all components required to yield energy in one enclosure, which is why there are battery explosion videos and no cookie explosion videos.

cstross 4y ago

The key word that's almost submerged in the article is molten. Like previous sodium-sulphur batteries this one relies on a molten salt electrolyte, meaning you won't see it in your phone or laptop any time soon! However, as it's being developed with the idea of grid-scale smoothing/backup, that's much less of a problem. (The square-cube law means that as you increase the volume of your molten salt cell, the surface area grows more slowly -- and thermal losses scale with surface area, so really big cells are cheaper to maintain at operating temperature.)

koliber 4y ago
That also jumped out at me when I read it. However, later on they state that this reaction works at room temperature: > Using a simple pyrolysis process and carbon-based electrodes to improve the reactivity of sulphur and the reversibility of reactions between sulphur and sodium, the researchers’ battery has shaken off its formerly sluggish reputation, exhibiting super-high capacity and ultra-long life at room temperature. This is confusing. Can someone make some sense of this?
- dahfizz 4y ago
  > exhibiting super-high capacity and ultra-long life at room temperature. Maybe this is just bad writing? The battery (at operating temp) has high capacity, and (at room temp) can be stored for a long time? The wikipedia page indicates that it is normal to store charged molten salt batteries at room temp when not being used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery
  - CuriousCosmic 4y ago
    I think it might literally mean "operates at room temperature" as in 25-35 degrees C. Not really sure how it works but there seems to be a distinction between high, intermediate, and room temperature for the Na-S battery's operating conditions. Quote from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21663831.2022.2092428 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21663831.2022.2... 1.1. History of Na-S batteries Research on Na-S batteries originated in the 1960s, with the first research focused on High-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur (HT-Na/S) batteries, which operate around 300–350 °C. A molten Na anode (melting point=98 °C), a molten sulfur cathode (melting point = 118 °C) and ceramic β'-Al2O3 as solid electrolyte are assembled into the HT-Na/S batteries [11]. HT-Na/S batteries avoid the dendrite problem and have high electrical conductivity. However, it also has the defects of high working temperature, high risk, low energy density and high operation cost. And then, the Intermediate-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur (IMT-Na/S) batteries were innovated in the 1970s and operate between 120–300 °C. The IMT-Na/S batteries also eliminated the dendrite problem, but the electronic conductivity and the utilization of sulfur also decreased. Researchers have been intensively investigating Room-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur (RT-Na/S) batteries, which operate around 25 °C-35 °C. RT-Na/S batteries can completely convert S8 to Na2S, so they have a high theoretical energy density (1274 Wh kg−1)

megaman821 4y ago

These scientific advances in batteries are cool, but I don't take them as a specific indicator of what is coming. It is a numbers game, if there are 1000 scientific advances maybe 1 or 2 will survive the gauntlet and make it into manufacturing in the next 10 years. It seems reasonable that there will be battery options that cost 50% as much and others that have 2x greater energy density in the near future. That seems great to me. Batteries will be viable and economical across most storage needs expect for aviation, shipping and seasonal grid storage.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
Same. If you follow articles like this you’ll be constantly wondering what happened to “x”. (“Graphene can do everything except get out of the lab”)
RGamma 4y ago
Specifically for grid storage I'd like to see more attention given to gravity batteries [0], the compressed liquid type. Recently saw a video (in German, [1]) in which there was back-of-the-envelope calculation that a gravity battery built by hydraulically raising a cylindrical landmass with 1km diameter by 500 meters stores about 2TWh (recent yearly gross electricity consumption of Germany is 560TWh). It's such a simple concept! Also, they are looking for investors: https://heindl-energy.com/ https://heindl-energy.com/ [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnomwGCBNAE https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnomwGCBNAE
- AndrewDucker 4y ago
  That is an obscenely large cylinder. And a large height to raise it!
- amalcon 4y ago
  Pumped-storage hydro (the cheapest and generally most practical gravity battery) is currently responsible for almost all grid-scale energy storage worldwide. I don't think it's fair to say it's not getting attention. What's not getting attention is the use of solids for this. The main reasons are that you'd like to re-use most of the infrastructure of the hydroelectric dam you wanted anyway, and that liquids make for simpler engineering in these cases.

Robotbeat 4y ago

They don’t mention the actual specific energy of the completed cells in Wh/kg. Also, “four times of WHAT?” They need to compare like-to-like, which would mean comparing to an equivalent Li-S cells. Li-S cells usually have much higher specific energy than regular lithium ion. I doubt these cells are better, considering sodium is heavier than lithium. The highest lithium ion cells you can get now are Amperium cells at 390Wh/kg, plus the metal anode Licerion cells at over 400Wh/kg. That’s not counting lithium sulfur which can get to 650Wh/kg (but are still stuck in the lab).

deng 4y ago
They say the charge capacity is 1017 mAh/g. That is about four times the value of a typical (good!) Li-Ion battery.
- bjarneh 4y ago
  Isn't that quite close to the magic number which makes electric planes a viable option? 1 kW = 1 kg; Musk said something about that in a podcast I think...
  - termain 4y ago
    That's specific power, not specific energy. Do you mean 1 kW*r/kg?
    - bjarneh 4y ago
      Yes of course, I meant to say 1 kW·h = 1 kg; but I'm not certain if I remember correctly now; I could be off by a factor of 10 I guess. It was either 1 kg battery weight = 1 kW·h, or perhaps he said 10 kW·h had to be contained in a 1 kg battery to allow all types of air travel. I think the 100 kW·h Tesla batteries found in the Model S/X weigh around 750 kg; so I guess electric air travel is still difficult unless a battery breakthrough happens; at least in terms of weight.
- danw1979 4y ago

sylware 4y ago

How do you process them once they run out of reasonably efficient cycles? Reconditioning facilities? wastes? etc?

Tagbert 4y ago
Considering the main ingredients are sodium and sulfur, recycling should not be a major problem. Those are commonly used elements and not particularly toxic. This question is always asked about EV batteries. Their recycling is something that is being developed but is still in prototype phase. Actual production scale recycling is not feasible yet because the number of retired EV batteries is too small to be efficiently recycled. That will eventually change but since EV batteries are generally lasting for a decade or more, it will take several years before we start seeing significant numbers needing to be recycled. I would expect that the same story would apply to these batteries if they are deployed.
- sylware 4y ago
  "recycling should not be a major problem", well, this is where more details would be more than welcome.
  - Tagbert 4y ago
    Since they are still developing this as tech, I am not surprised if they are not really discussing how to recycle it. Recycling would depend on how much of this ends up getting built, how much value there is in the components, and whether there is a cost/risk of not recycling. If only a small number are ever built, then recycling isn't much of a concern. There doesn't seem to be anything in here that is radically different than other batteries and the components are less toxic than many.

m3kw9 4y ago

With batteries is that there are way more factors than just capacity. You need thermal run way, cold/hot weather perf, heat generated, charge time, numb cycles before capacity is 80%, weight power ratio, scalability and cost

thehappypm 4y ago
Some applications are easier than others. Grid storage, for example, can be in climate controlled warehouses, do optimal charging cycles to maximize longevity, don’t care about weight, etc.

ncann 4y ago

Sorry, I can't resist the urge to repost this classic comment on a thread about new battery technology: Dear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because: [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale. [ ] it will be too expensive for users. [ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles. [ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels. [ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures. [ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable. [ ] it has too short of a lifetime. [ ] its charge rate is too slow. [ ] its materials are too toxic. [ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode. [ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care. [ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then. [ ] by this time it ships li-ion advances will match it. [ ] your claims are lies.

Tade0 4y ago
I have a very simple criterion: Do they have a production process designed for this new technology? That's the final step to commercialization and is often the barrier that prevents new chemistries from entering the market.
PaulHoule 4y ago
From a young age I've combed the shelves at public libraries and found handbooks on battery technology. Often 1/3 of the book is devoted to ordinary batteries and the other 2/3 are devoted to "reserve batteries" which are able to deliver a high power density for a short time to power a missile or something like that. There was a huge amount of research on those and I think it's easier to make a battery work if it doesn't have to last very long. NiMH batteries seemed to come out of nowhere. I remember Sony licensing the technology for "InfoLithium" batteries that eventually took over the world. The market for batteries is bigger than it ever was. Grid scale batteries relax many constraints: molten salt batteries might be practical there. The South Africans thought this kind of battery might be relevant for cars in the late 1970's and 1980's https://www.afrik21.africa/en/south-africa-the-zebra-salt-battery-suitable-for-storing-renewables/ https://www.afrik21.africa/en/south-africa-the-zebra-salt-ba... and it might be again with electric cars legitmized and if oil is out of reach.

dreamcompiler 4y ago

Sodium-sulfur batteries are already in use for grid storage [0] [1]. They're large and they have to be kept hot, so they won't work for mobile applications. This article seems to be describing one that works at room temperature. [0] https://www.energy-storage.news/uae-integrates-648mwh-of-sodium-sulfur-batteries-in-one-swoop/ https://www.energy-storage.news/uae-integrates-648mwh-of-sod... [1] https://www.bestmag.co.uk/worlds-largest-sodium-sulphur-ess-deployed-japan/ https://www.bestmag.co.uk/worlds-largest-sodium-sulphur-ess-...

Tade0 4y ago

I wonder how does it stack up against non-flow zinc-bromide batteries, which apparently are already being produced and are aiming for the stationary storage market: https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/09/30/gelion-unveils-battery-manufacturing-facility-in-sydney/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/09/30/gelion-unve... The 2MWh/yr plant is very small, but reportedly it's a repurposed lead-acid facility because the production process is similar enough.

mikeytown2 4y ago

Let me know when I can buy 30kwh worth of energy storage so I can compare it to Lifepo4 costs [1] [1] $10,500 https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-ll-lithium-batteries-kit-48v-100ah-x-6-30-72kwh-6-server-rack-batteries-with-pre-assembled-enclosed-rack-with-door-wheelsac/ https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-ll-lithium-batteries-kit-48v-...

aidenn0 4y ago
LiFePO4 batteries are really magical; mostly made of easy-to-find materials, good density, long lifetime, hard to make explode.
- mikeytown2 4y ago
  LiFeYPO4 Have a wide temperature range of -45° to 85° C. Uses Yttriumbut cost more
driverdan 4y ago
Those are the more expensive packs with LCDs. The cheaper, simpler packs are only $9000 and just as good.

alex_young 4y ago

4 x the energy density, but 8 x the mass. These will be heavy batteries. Kinda defeats the point.

inamberclad 4y ago
Good for plenty of applications, such as power plants and renewables.

wankle 4y ago

I was never good with chemistry, the battery sounded icky to make. I'd bet on the Iron Edison battery or the iron rust battery instead.