10 ms·

According to https://www.epectec.com/batteries/cell-comparison.html https://www.epectec.com/batteries/cell-comparison.html, 160 Wh/kg is about the same density

• boxed 3y ago
  Sodium is extremely plentiful, while lithium is not.
  • zizee 3y ago
    I had thought that this was not a huge win, as lithium is fairly cheap, and not a large portion of the overall cost of a battery. However, my research taught me I was incorrect. Lithium is worth about $40k per tonne, or $40 per kg. A Tesla power wall 2 is about 150kg, if half of that is lithium, then the lithium alone is worth $2.3k. Powerball costs about $9.5k, so the lithium is a fair portion of the cost. https://www.thisoldhouse.com/solar-alternative-energy/reviews/tesla-powerwall-cost https://www.thisoldhouse.com/solar-alternative-energy/review... https://www.statista.com/statistics/606350/battery-grade-lithium-carbonate-price/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/606350/battery-grade-lit... Note, I know raw lithium carbonate is not stuck directly into a battery, just spitballing with the little bit of learning I just did.
    • passwordoops 3y ago
      Also right now about 70% of all lithium comes from only two places (Chile, Australia). Iron and sodium are pretty much everywhere so this potentially eliminates at least one supply bottleneck
      • raducu 3y ago
        > eliminates at least one supply bottleneck The CIA wants to know your location /s . I know this kind of joke is not appreciated on HN (for good reason), but one has to ponder of the implication of cheap/dense energy/storage and what big actors like governments, big corporations would think about not being able to effectively control energy production/storage/distribution.
        • globalise83 3y ago
          At least in Europe, governments are going to great efforts and expense to decentralise and decarbonise the production, storage and distribution of energy. The implication is that as well as producing energy through renewables close to where it is used, it can be cheaply and sustainably stored there as well.
        • _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
          If you are the Chilean or Australien government you would maybe be unhappy about moving away from Lithium. Most other governments would love it e.g. Europe doesn't have much Lithium (or at least not a lot that is easy enough to extract to make it profitable). The EU and european governments already try to rely less on foreign supply chains, especially since they relied so heavily on Russia for gas and now have to scramble to find other sources.
          • culi 3y ago
            Maybe the corporations of those countries. But Australian and Chilean citizens both loathe the environmental and health impacts of these industries. Especially those that live in or around the "sacrifice zones" of these industries
          • raducu 3y ago
            > Europe doesn't have much Lithium The USA doesn't care if there's Xium inside the USA. Xium just has to be in a few places and it has to be moved across the globe, transacted in USD and guarded by the US Navy. Big corporations will not invest if they can't create a moat.
    • trhway 3y ago
      >A Tesla power wall 2 is about 150kg, if half of that is lithium an order of magnitude less. 30KWh is just about 3kg of lithium in theory. On practice it would be about 7-10% of the weight of the battery.
      • zizee 3y ago
        Do you have a source for that? I don't doubt what you write, but I would love to learn more.
        • xxs 3y ago
          realistically the cobalt based Li-Ion can reach ~250Wh/kg (and they are better than the LiFePO4). So 3kg of cobalt based li-ion would be below 1kW/h
    • grenoire 3y ago
      Lithium is cheap because the externalities of the environmental damage it causes is not accounted for in the pricing. It's a highly exploitative resource which has destructive impacts on local bacterial ecosystems, human communities, and water availability. Some articles, if you are interested: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629821000421 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09626... https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/facing-water-stress-chiles-lithium-industry-under-scrutiny-in-atacama-desert/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/fac... It's not even comparable to sodium, which is abundant practically everywhere.
      • ajuc 3y ago
        > Lithium is cheap because the externalities of the environmental damage it causes is not accounted for in the pricing. Like every other raw resource we use.
        • culi 3y ago
          Let's not flatten it. Different materials have different externalities. And are available in different places with different levels of human rights and environmental protections
          • hedora 3y ago
            Lithium and sodium are both easily mined from sea water.
            • culi 3y ago
              Seawater contains less than 1ppm of lithium (compared to 300-7k ppm in brine). There are zero commercial facilities to produce lithium from sea salt. It's not even a notable byproduct from other seawater-based processing facilities
          • ajuc 3y ago
            Sodium is better than lithium in that respect. But both are MUCH better than hydrocarbons. The amount you need for driving a car for 3 years is several kg vs tonnes. And you can recycle the battery but you can't recycle the oil you burned. That's why I'm not particularly harsh on lithium externalities. Let's get the low-hanging fruits first before we focus on nuances.
    • Tuna-Fish 3y ago
      > A Tesla power wall 2 is about 150kg, if half of that is lithium, This estimate is very far off. 1% is closer.
    • cornholio 3y ago
      That's a electric car battery, optimized for mobility: fast charge & low self-discharge, maximum density allowed by the projected lifetime, custom form factor, heat and cold resistant, vibration resistant and mechanically sturdy etc. When you think of an application like grid connected energy storage, most of those performance metrics are irrelevant, and the only thing that really matters is cell cost per total energy stored and delivered during its lifetime. We will likely see something over-engineered and simplified to maximize cycle count and minimize cost, leading to a much larger raw material consumption, at the expense of density - the cell is not going anywhere. So the ability to use dirty cheap ingredients is a game changer for the grid storage market.
    • fransje26 3y ago
      > lithium is fairly cheap For now. But more importantly, there are sovereignty problems to considered in case things get worse in the future. And the quality and usability of the lithium substrate varies quite a bit between suppliers, with the better ones, for now, coming from the less "attractive" suppliers.
  • xxs 3y ago
    lithium is not the issue at all for Li-Ion.
    • oddmiral 3y ago
      Price of lithium jumped 6x in 2020-2022: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/trends-in-batteries https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/trends-in...
      • tooltalk 3y ago
        but is now down by 75+% since last November peak (and still declining). I suspect that we won't see another price spike like last year's for quite some time.
• russdill 3y ago
  It's made of sodium and iron, which together make up about 8% of the earth's crust, so yes, they chemistry is made of really common materials. By contrast lithium makes up about 0.002%.
  • yrro 3y ago
    I was editing after doing some basic research so sorry for making it look like you're repeating my comment :)
  • kzrdude 3y ago
    Lithium is element #3 on the periodic table so it's very simple and should be universally abundant. Literally in the universe, unfortunately not on earth.
    • nickcw 3y ago
      There is a lot less Lithium in the universe than you might expect being element #3 There is also a lot less Lithium in the universe than our models predict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_lithium_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_lithium_problem
      • willis936 3y ago
        This stinks of bad science. All of the observations come from stars. "Older stars seem to have less lithium than they should, and some younger stars have much more." "BBC Science Focus wrote in 2023 that "recent research seems to completely discount" such theories; the magazine held that mainstream lithium nucleosynthesis calculations are probably correct." I am unconvinced.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
    • arbitrandomuser 3y ago
      Helium is no 2 , and that too is pretty scarce on earth , but again helium is a very light gas and simply shoots out of the atmosphere eventually, Why is lithium rare
• Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  If it's cheaper than lithium but not significntly smaller, at least it'll be more scalable and affordable for e.g. energy grid or home battery applications.
  • emayljames 3y ago
    It also has a vastly superior safety profile, also meaning is easier and safer to construct. It does not have the overheating problems of lithium batteries.
    • elric 3y ago
      I've long dreamt of being able to to have a battery buried under the cellar floor. Size and weight wouldn't matter. Lifetime and safety would be quite important.
      • culi 3y ago
        Is the lifespan of sodium-ion better than Li-ion?
        • aredox 3y ago
          Depends on the anode
        • fransje26 3y ago
          They claim 2'000 cycles for their current 18650s, which, I believe, is about twice that of li-ions?
          • rootusrootus 3y ago
            "Lithium Ion" encompasses a lot of chemistries. LFP, which is what is most competitive with sodium ion, has a cycle range of 3000-10000.
  • jonnycomputer 3y ago
• apexalpha 3y ago
  While I am very pleased to see these developments away from Lithium I do think your estimates for Li-po and Li-ion are off by a few generations of batteries. Lipo can be 200+ /kg density and Li Ion can be 250+ in current, commercially produced, generations of battery cells. I'm not a pro so anyone feel free to correct me.
  • F30 3y ago
    Not sure about the exact numbers, but your sentiment is basically accurate. This is an article about the Northvolt news by a German journalist specialized on battery technology (in German): https://www.golem.de/news/akkutechnik-northvolt-und-altris-entwickeln-eigenen-natrium-ionen-akku-2311-179620.html https://www.golem.de/news/akkutechnik-northvolt-und-altris-e... He says that 160 Wh/kg is in the ballpark of LFP batteries from five years ago. It is, however, about the same as the sodium batteries announced by CATL in 2021.
    • hutzlibu 3y ago
      This would be a way better article about the topic, than the press release by Northvolt, if it wouldn't be in german. Frank Wunderlich-Pfeiffer should consider writing in english, I love his expertise and clarity of writing.
  • lobocinza 3y ago
    Volume also matters.
• AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Keep in mind sodium ion and LFP are much safer and don't require nearly as much cooling and management systems as nickel-cobalt chemistries So at the PACK level of energy density, which is really all that matters, sodium ion and LFP close much of the gap with nickel-cobalt. So spitballing here, an NMC chemistry at 240 wk/kg at the CELL level will lose about 20+% ore of density per weight for cooling and safety, so that they will be effectively 160 wh/kg at the PACK level. Most CATL literature has LFP and sodium ion at 90-95% at the pack level with "cell-to-pack" which bypasses modules and other intermediate packaging. So if 240 wh/kg NMC chemistry is actually 160 wh/kg at PACK level, and this sodium ion is 160 wh/kg but about 150 wh/kg at PACK level, well then you see the real power of these chemistries. If the pack level 160-180 wh/kg equates to a 400 mile car, then 140-160 wh/kg sodium ion at pack level equates to a 300+ mile car. 300 miles means a really good city car. It means you can probably do a 50-100 mile PHEV car pretty cheap. It means cheap, limit-is-number-of-factories scaling of EV battery supply. Sodium ion is supposed to be 40$ or less bill of materials per kw-hr compared to 80-100 for NMC and about 50-70 for LFP. And it should probably drop from there in the long run. It also means that EVs beat ICEs on drivetrain cost, possibly by a significant margin, which might translate to a 4000$ + price difference from an ICE. Combined with theoretically cheaper maintenance and "fuel" costs, this should translate to an EV cost advantage that people simply won't be able to overlook. Personally I think there should be an overall "carbon externality charge" of $5000 on a new ICE as well, or something that scales with the carbon inefficiency of the vehicle (so a bigass suburban assault vehicle is like $10000). Also, note that the roadmap for batteries of CATL, a lot like the roadmap for future nodes in semiconductors so take it with a grain of salt as to when they realize the goals, is for 200 wh/kg sodium ion and 240-260 wh/kg LFP. With superior cell-to-pack density, that should mean a 400 mile car for sodium ion, and a 500 mile car for LFP. Now, hopefully in 5-10 years we get lithium-sulfur and sodium-sulfur that are AT LEAST 50% more dense with similar materials costs. Then you get to shrink the battery to make the EV even cheaper. So the revolution is coming, in my opinion. And this isn't just a gee-whiz a faster pc for my Overwatch. This is "future survival of humanity in the balance". We NEED to decarbonize transportation, and we NEED cheap batteries for alternative energy grid storage. The development of these technologies is preservation-of-humanity level of importance, and high density sodium ion chemistries are a major major step towards that because of all the economic and practical levels/needs/requirements they meet/exceed.
• JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  And how strange to rate a storage battery 'per kilogram'. It's just sitting there, on the grid, storing. The weight is entirely irrelevant. The interesting number for stationary storage is, Wh per $. I wonder where how they compare on that (relevant) measure?
  • PaulKeeble 3y ago
    CATL's Sodium Ion is claimed to be 1/3 the price of Li-ion. It is a lot cheaper per KWH but also a little bigger than LiPho which itself is quite a bit bigger than Li-ion. I haven't seen it that cheap yet, its got new tech prices at the moment for cells on aliexpress.
    • rootusrootus 3y ago
      > LiPho LiPho? Are you thinking of LiFePO4, aka LFP?
      • PaulKeeble 3y ago
        Yes. Sorry Long Covid brain fog I keep thinking there is a H in that I know there isn't because I have 3 of them in my house!
• fransje26 3y ago
  > so I assume it's not competitive in energy density per litre so I assume not. Their competitive argument is a fast charging time with a low impact on the life the battery pack, with a full charge under 10 minutes and about 2'000 cycles. They also have a good available power and capacity at 20C discharge rates.
• specialist 3y ago
  Yes and: Their anode uses "hard carbon", not graphite. Apparently without sacrificing energy density. This is huge. HUGE. China dominates the graphite market and now has export controls. IIRC, most current Li and Sodium batteries use graphite anodes of some kind. Northvote's use of hard carbon may prove to be an amazing cost and derisking advantage. I know nothing about their novel Prussian White cathode. I eagerly await the expert analysis of Northvote's anode and cathode.
• ChuckMcM 3y ago
  Fun fact, that is why PR uses 160 Wh/Kg as its current "best in class". The Northvolt release is a bit cagey on what they actually have today for sale but it seems like they are going into production so that is a good thing. "Whole house" energy store (think PowerWall types of products) are getting good traction and grid scale batteries have changed some folks minds about what is "good enough" (you don't care if it is maximally dense if you can spread it out over an acre or three). So I would expect them to push for this sort of application first. The current market need for large local battery store for EV chargers is apparently one of the limiting factors in deploying new chargers, delivering spot excess demand can be provided by either onsite diesel generators (like some rest areas in California are doing now) or a battery bank. The latter is preferable for energy efficiency and maintenance reasons.