[HN Gopher] Northvolt develops state-of-the-art sodium-ion batte... ___________________________________________________________________ Northvolt develops state-of-the-art sodium-ion battery validated at 160 Wh/kg Author : Phenomenit Score : 490 points Date : 2023-11-21 08:50 UTC (14 hours ago) (HTM) web link (northvolt.com) (TXT) w3m dump (northvolt.com) | anovikov wrote: | I believe it when i see it at volume. | XorNot wrote: | Honestly depends on cycle life is the thing. I believe anything | can be made at volume: whether it is depends on whether it's | actually genuinely useful enough when you do - hence a lot of | the quiet "revolutionary" things which go away (because | actually, all the other trade offs eliminate the revolutionary | bit). | WhereIsTheTruth wrote: | It's coming, by 2025 | | (French) https://www.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/batteries-sodium-ion- | une-pre... | farialima wrote: | it's actually shipping ! | | Leroy Merlin (the French "big box" home improvement chain) is | selling a electric screwdriver that use sodium-ion battery, | seems to be working well: (French) | https://www.leroymerlin.fr/produits/outillage/outillage- | elec... | | doesn't seem to be many in stock - it's only available at | some stores - but seems to be victim of its success | anovikov wrote: | I don't mean sodium batteries. I mean anything at all from | Northvolt. So far it seems to be more of "give us a lot of | taxpayer money and we will say a lot of bs that will give you | a lot of votes" kind of business. | pelorat wrote: | Northvolt builds and ships lots of batteries. | goodSteveramos wrote: | And no sodium batteries | yrro wrote: | According to https://www.epectec.com/batteries/cell- | comparison.html, 160 Wh/kg is about the same density as Li-po and | Li-ion. This battery chemistry is attractive in that it's made | from common materials & is more stable/safer than Lithium. The | press release doesn't say, so I assume it's not competitive in | energy density per litre so I assume not. | | Wikipedia has a comparison table at | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery#Comparison but | no idea how accurate/up to date it is. | boxed wrote: | Sodium is extremely plentiful, while lithium is not. | zizee wrote: | 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/review... | | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | > 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 wrote: | 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_ wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | > 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 wrote: | >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 wrote: | Do you have a source for that? I don't doubt what you | write, but I would love to learn more. | xxs wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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/S0962 | 6... https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy- | environment/news/fac... | | It's not even comparable to sodium, which is abundant | _practically everywhere_. | ajuc wrote: | > 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | Lithium and sodium are both easily mined from sea water. | culi wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | specialist wrote: | Now compare to fossil fuels. | Tuna-Fish wrote: | > A Tesla power wall 2 is about 150kg, if half of that is | lithium, | | This estimate is very far off. | | 1% is closer. | cornholio wrote: | 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 wrote: | > 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 wrote: | lithium is not the issue at all for Li-Ion. | oddmiral wrote: | Price of lithium jumped 6x in 2020-2022: | https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/trends- | in... | tooltalk wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | I was editing after doing some basic research so sorry for | making it look like you're repeating my comment :) | kzrdude wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 | willis936 wrote: | 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. | arbitrandomuser wrote: | 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 | Tuna-Fish wrote: | Lithium is not very universally abundant. | | You cannot estimate abundance by atomic number like that. | The big bang produced mostly hydrogen and helium, with | traces of lithium and beryllium. The elements heavier than | that are mostly produced by stars, and the physics of | fusion have a massive impact on what elements, | specifically, get made. Free protons join together to | become helium-4 much more readily than any other fusion | process, meaning that by the time heavier things start | forming, the raw material is entirely 4He. | | This means that things that are easily made of 4He are | dramatically more common than anything else, making the | most common isotopes after 4He oxygen-16 (4 alphas), | carbon-12 (3 alphas, less common than oxygen because it's | less stable and easily picks up another alpha), neon-20 (5 | alphas), and iron-56 (14 alphas to nickel-56 which | immediately decays twice through b+ to produce 56Fe). Iron | is so high up above all the other intermediate steps, | because it's the last stop: In heavy enough stars, the | entire core converts to iron, and reactions past that are | energy-consuming, not energy-producing, so after that the | star collapses. | | Lithium is not on any of the major stellar nucleosynthesis | pathways, which means it's only produced by exceptional | processes, making it roughly as universally abundant as the | other stuff that is made by exceptional processes, like | scandium or gallium or zirconium. But none of that matters, | because: | | Lithium is abundant and easy to extract in the earth's | crust. | | While there's not that much of it up there, there's plenty | easy to extract down here, because it's so light and likes | forming light compounds, meaning that a huge proportion of | all the lithium of all the rocks that came together to form | the earth is reachable to us. Lithium is not rare. Any | statement about lithium batteries that bemoans the scarcity | of lithium is doubly confused: Firstly, because lithium is | simply not scarce. Secondly, because lithium is such a tiny | portion of the battery, that despite being in the name, | only a small fraction of the materials cost is lithium. | | Lithium price has had a few big spikes because mining is a | very high-capital industry where spinning up projects is | measured in years, if not decades, and we suddenly started | using a lot more lithium in ~2010. Accordingly, the price | has spiked from the ~$5k per ton (which is roughly in the | same ballpark typical cost of extraction, where any | abundant mineral prices end up at), to the heights of $37k | per ton last year. Even at this high price, lithium was not | even the most expensive material component in most lithium | batteries, because typically only 1-3% of the battery's | weight is lithium. | | But these prices won't last, because having the price of a | commodity so high above the cost of extraction means that | new mining projects are spinning up. | defrost wrote: | Re: Lithium as a resource: | | USGS (2021): Five mineral operations in | Australia, two brine operations each in Argentina and | Chile, and two brine and one mineral operation in China | accounted for the majority of world lithium production. | Owing to overproduction and decreased prices, several | established lithium operations postponed capacity | expansion plans. Junior mining operations in Australia | and Canada ceased production altogether. | | USGS (2023): Six mineral operations in | Australia, one mineral tailings operation in Brazil, two | brine operations each in Argentina and Chile, and three | mineral and two brine operations in China accounted for | the majority of world lithium production. | Additionally, smaller operations in Brazil, Canada, | China, Portugal, the United States, and Zimbabwe also | contributed to world lithium production. | Owing to the rapid increase in demand and prices of | lithium in 2022, established lithium operations worldwide | increased or were in the process of increasing production | capacity. | | Sources: | | * https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-lithi | um.pd... | | * https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023.pdf | | Bonus British Geo. Soc. Global Li Map: https://www2.bgs.a | c.uk/mineralsuk/download/global_critical_m... | Tuna-Fish wrote: | Also from the 2023 USGS periodical: | Lithium supply security has become a top priority for | technology companies in Asia, Europe, and North America. | Strategic alliances and joint ventures among technology | companies and exploration companies continued to be | established to ensure a reliable, diversified supply of | lithium for battery suppliers and vehicle manufacturers. | Brine-based lithium sources were in various stages of | development or exploration in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, | China, and the United States; mineral-based lithium | sources were in various stages of development or | exploration in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, | Congo (Kinshasa), Czechia, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, | Ghana, Kazakhstan, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, Peru, | Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, the United | States, and Zimbabwe; lithium-clay sources were in | various stages of development or exploration in Mexico | and the United States. | defrost wrote: | Sure, there's two or three pages there IIRC. | | If you want to go in depth, though, you can always hit: | | https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/ | met... | bloopernova wrote: | Thank you for a fascinating comment. I learned new stuff | from it; I appreciate you and your expertise! | gosub100 wrote: | Thank you for this explanation. | | > because lithium is such a tiny portion of the battery | | Is this why recycling it is so difficult? | chongli wrote: | That's not how it works! Lithium is a fuel that gets used | up by stars immediately whenever it might be produced in | trace amounts. Unlike hydrogen, lithium wasn't produced in | the Big Bang. So most of the lithium that remains in the | universe is produced outside of the cores of stars through | the interaction of cosmic rays with other matter. Needless | to say, that's not a very common interaction (relatively | speaking). | | Now if you look at how larger stars operate (the CNO cycle | [1]) you'll see that it matches up with the higher relative | abundance of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in the universe. | Lithium, beryllium, and boron get "skipped over" in a | sense. | | Furthermore, if you look at a graph of the relative | abundance of all elements, you'll note that odd-numbered | elements are less abundant than even (with the exceptions | of hydrogen and beryllium). This is called the Oddo-Harkins | rule [2] and it may also be playing a role. | | _Edit: I should also add that the third major process in | stars, triple-a [3], involves the fusion of three helium-4 | nuclei into one carbon-12 nucleus. This occurs in older | stars that have exhausted most of their hydrogen fuel and | so have built up a large core of "inert" helium. When their | outward pressure from hydrogen fusion is no longer high | enough to withstand gravity, they reach the much higher | pressures and temperatures needed for triple-a fusion. | Unfortunately for the lithium industry, there's no chance | of producing lithium this way since it is skipped over on | the way to carbon._ | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycle | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddo%E2%80%93Harkins_rule | | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-alpha_process | simplicio wrote: | Nitpick: Lithium was produced in the Big Bang, though in | a ratio of something like one per billion compared to H | production. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_lithium_proble | m | hedora wrote: | Lithium is extremely abundant on earth. Unless we start | launching it into space, or start building up after | covering the surface with buildings and roads, we're not | going to run out. | | Lithium _production capacity_ is scarce however, since it's | a mostly useless element unless you're building batteries | out of it. | | Anyway, once cities realize that they need to stop taking | water from rivers, we should be able to skim quite a bit of | lithium from desalination plant waste water. | BobaFloutist wrote: | I mean in that case Hydrogen fuel cells are clearly the | future, just as soon as we manage to make our gravity well | irrelevant. | jvm___ wrote: | https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/s/Co4zeAhcmT | | Iron is on top. Lithium is one up from the bottom left. | 867-5309 wrote: | strange how calcium and sodium are omitted | raverbashing wrote: | Sodium is not "mined" per se, as, you know, just get some | sea water | | Calcium is, but maybe because it's not processed as most | metals it is not included in the graph | vlabakje90 wrote: | At least half of all NaCl that's used world wide is mined | from salt mines. For many places in the world it's not | feasible to rely on solar evaporation of sea water. Using | other energy sources to evaporate sea salt is not cost | effective and many places have large salt deposits. | | https://salt-partners.com/pdf/Santorini2006Paper.pdf | Integrape wrote: | Would it be feasible to use the sodium from desalination | wastewater? | culi wrote: | desalination wastewater contains a number of other | chemicals used in the desalination process (e.g. pH | adjusters, coagulants and flocculants, antiscalants, | dispersants, biocides, and reducing chemicals) | amelius wrote: | So the next question: would those contaminants | significantly degrade the performance of the battery? | culi wrote: | I mean... pH adjusters would definitely significantly | alter things. The other major problem (I'd guess) is just | the health implications of working with toxic wastewater. | Is it safe? | | For context, as of 2019, we produced enough of this | "brine" to cover Florida with 30 centimeters of brine | every year. That means, as a whole, desalination plants | actually produce even more toxic wastewater than they do | clean drinking water. | | As a result figuring out ways we could utilize this | _product_ ("byproduct" feels like the wrong term here | considering it's the primary thing produced) is a major | area of interest | Integrape wrote: | Didn't gasoline start out as a byproduct of kerosene | production? | culi wrote: | Sure but it's alternative uses were already known. It | just so happened that a world-altering invention (the | consumer automobile) came along to dramatically raise | already existing demand for it. There is currently no | demand/use for desalination brine. For every "this | byproduct is actually useful" story there's likely 10 | byproducts that simply stay byproducts. Still, it's | urgent we figure out something to do with it since it's | damaging our ocean ecosystems | ars wrote: | I looked up your claim that desalination plants produce | "toxic wastewater" and I found nothing to support it. The | output appears to be simple concentrated ocean water, and | that's it. | | Can you cite your claim? | fullspectrumdev wrote: | They can be removed in purification steps. | | Go from the super high salinity brine through to crude | salt, then chloralkali process to get sodium (which can | be cleaned up) and chlorine gas (industrially useful). | raverbashing wrote: | I am aware of this, but mining (or salt water processing) | for the specific extraction of sodium metal from NaCl or | others is really small | | Mined salt is probably more valuable as table salt (and | cattle feed) than as source of metallic Na | oblio wrote: | Sodium is also mined for sure. There's a reason there are | many expressions about salt mines :-) | raducu wrote: | > the chemistry is made of really common materials | | I don't want to sound like a conspiray theorist, but | something tells me the really big actors (like states) only | want materials that they can control the suply of. | earthnail wrote: | I don't think control goes that far. China definitely | thinks that way, but I doubt the western governments do. | wheelerof4te wrote: | As always, whoever has the biggest guns will control this | resource as well. | | If someome resists, they will end up just like anyone who | opposed the US's quest to take other nations oil. | | As Donald used to say: | | "Take the oil, then get out". They took the oil and stayed. | Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: | Which countries did the US take oil from? Any data around | number of barrels ect? | oblio wrote: | They're probably referencing Iraq and I'm not sure it was | raw resource extraction as it was so much removal of a | competitor (whatever the name of the Iraqi state oil | company was) and more than that, enabling sales of | equipment, consulting, etc. It wasn't as simple as some | 1800s colonialism, it was advanced wealth extraction | worthy of the 21st century. | Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: | Ok. So the US spent $3 trillion[0] on a war in Iraq to | get some consulting contracts from a country with a GDP | of $36 billion[1]? And didn't invade Saudi Arabia, which | actually has oil? How much wealth do you estimate the US | extacted from the war? | | [0]https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/true-cost- | iraq-war-... | | [1]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?en | d=2001... | hedora wrote: | The Europeans were starting to loosen Iraqi oil sanctions | and develop the fields before the second war. | | The US often does stuff that costs taxpayers trillions so | that the people bribing congress can make billions. | | PFAS, Canadian lumber sanctions and oxycontin are three | recent examples. | Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: | >The Europeans were starting to loosen Iraqi oil | sanctions | | Any links I can read about this? I'm open to the idea | that suppressing Iraq's oil industry was the main | objective of the war. I _don 't_ like claims about "the | US's quest to take other nations oil" being that it never | happened either in Iraq or even Iran. At least when I ask | for a source I can never get one. To me the wars in Iraq | and Afghanistan were mainly about projecting power, not | oil. Certainly not Afghanistan because there is little to | no oil there in the first place. Even regarding Iraq it | is OPEC that sets the price and I doubt they would let | Iraq greatly reduce the market price. It would have to be | as you say: people with connections using the US's power | to suppress competition. Many people online, however, | seem to have the idea that US foriegn policy dictates | collecting oil and that the US is stealing trillions of | dollars of oil from various third world countries. I | think the US gains a lot more from war to project power. | Iraq for the most part today is a US ally. And if we are | looking for people who would gain from the war it would | more likely be Lockheed than Exxon. Lastly, there is no | reason to say that _US_ oil companies staged the war | exclusively. It is possible that eg. SA were also | involved or the main initiators. | JAlexoid wrote: | I'm sorry, but Saudis were the biggest losers in removing | Saddam. | | Removal of Saddam removed one of the biggest adversaries | of Iran. Now Iranian Revolutionary Guard can freely move | from Tehran to Beirut and support the rebels in Yemen. | hirsin wrote: | While I don't lend credence to it being that simple, it's | worth noting that the people making that profit aren't | the ones paying for it, and the ones paying for it aren't | using their own money. | oblio wrote: | The US spent a ton of money from the US public so that a | few US individuals can stuff their pockets. Corruption. | JAlexoid wrote: | You literally contradicted your own original statement. | oblio wrote: | Those individuals used the US gov to do it, see Cheney. | Read up about Leopold and Congo. | wheelerof4te wrote: | Iraq, Syria comes to mind. Yes, the US is still in Syria. | They would have tried that shit with Venezuela, but | Ruskies got there first. | irjustin wrote: | > sound like a conspiray theorist | | Well you do? | | It won't work as long as there's a roughly equal | alternative that's cheaper/easier to produce. Free market | will win here. | | There's no way one state can force another state (aside | from war) to manufacture something a particular way. It's | like if I controlled the world's timber supply and said | Canada must produce houses out of timber and not, say, | concrete. Canada's gonna go produce using concrete unless I | somehow make my timber price competitive. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | > It's like if I controlled the world's timber supply and | said Canada must produce houses out of timber | | This is quite naive - in fact we do this all the time | | * IMF provides loans to developing countries on the | condition that they dont have 'socialist' policies | | * EU bailouts for Greece/aspain/etc. was given on the | condition of sale of state assets and doing other things | | * The worlds ship insurance industry is run in London. | Nuclear powered contsiner ships are faster, cheaper, and | better in every way. Good luck insuring them. Running | them without insurance is. illegal | | *'non-tariff barriers' - i.e. free trade negotiations - | are all about aligning countries on how they | manufacture/insure/regulate things like cars. Guess which | econony gets the bigger say. | | Russia was forced to adopt Eu standards for petrol | quality and engine emissions standards in 2,000's and | they still follow | irjustin wrote: | You're right I was too flippant with my language. I was | only thinking about the US and its strategic desires. | zajio1am wrote: | > IMF provides loans to developing countries on the | condition that they dont have 'socialist' policies | | Because these 'socialist' policies are usually the reason | why these countries need IMF loans. | JAlexoid wrote: | IMF provides loans and expects them to be repaid, having | rules on government spending attached to the loans is... | reasonable. Not to mention, that IMF loans are typically | bailouts of governments that overspent. | | Same goes with the EU bailouts, but PIGS countries were | already in a compact with the rest of the Eurozone. Not | to mention, that governments should not own things that | can go bust and drag a budget under water. | | As shown lately with Russian oil sales - it's absolutely | possible to insure ships somewhere else, other than | Lloyd's of London. | raducu wrote: | > Free market will win here | | Think batteries and nuclear fusion. | | Extremely hard stuff, not easy to pick apples. | | State actors can absolutely influence the fields for | decades by choosing to fund certain approaches that lend | themseves to centralisation. | Tade0 wrote: | That's actually the official policy in many cases. For | instance, the EU is funding research in li-ion recycling so | that it could create a "circular economy" with imports only | there to make up for material lost during processing, as | e.g. the car market is largely saturated, so the | expectation is that demand won't grow. | oblio wrote: | Yeah, but that's not a conspiracy or even something | negative. It's just common sense for a country/group of | countries. | | OP made it sound like the Evil Corporate Overlords are | conspiring to hold us back from achieving battery | freedumb. | bertil wrote: | If they can; abundant is the next best thing. | | Any country without an expeditionary military force (about | 187 of them) likes the resources they have. Ab abundant is | great unless you have a known military adversary with | extra-territorial ambition (that's three countries). | ajuc wrote: | Transistors are the most valuable thing we can produce per | kilogram and sell easily. We had many processes over the | years, but we settled on making them from sillicon. I.e. | sand. | | Think about it :) | thinkcontext wrote: | China already has GWH scale sodium battery plants. So if | THEY have been trying to suppress it THEY aren't doing very | well. | | This announcement is about an improvement in energy density | made possible by $Bs being invested to allow sodium | batteries to become more competitive with lithium. | | There are also other battery chemistries being rolled out. | Iron based ones seem particularly promising for stationary | storage. | bertil wrote: | Northvolt's original factory in Skelleftea is near (well, | 'Arctic near': 460 km along an existing rail line) Kiruna, | one of the largest Iron mines in the world, so that's one of | the two material supply safe. | | Industrial Sodium is made with electrolysis of sea salt; the | factory is next to the Gulf of Bothany and has abundant (wind | and hydro) power, so the other material supply is safe. | | It wasn't hard anywhere, but it's straightforward in that | particular case. | antonhag wrote: | This got me thinking - the salinity of the water in the | bothnian bay is very low (seems to be about 1/10th of ocean | water). Wouldn't that effect electrolysis? | bertil wrote: | Possibly--but if that's a concern, you can also get some | from the North Atlantic. | hwillis wrote: | Misleading way of looking at it. Lithium and sodium are not | the major cost (or weight, or volume) inputs to making | batteries, and crustal occurrence is very distantly related | to cost. We mine things from places with 100x-1mx higher | concentrations than natural. Water concentrates lithium into | brines and clays for us. Sodium's low density causes it to | create massive domes underground that are extremely | recoverable. In contrast many metals aren't naturally | concentrated. | | Lithium batteries aren't made of lithium. They're made of | nickel- or iron, or manganese, or cobalt. In iron and | manganese batteries the #1 price factor is the manufacturing- | the energy, solvents, and machinery used to deposit materials | onto film. | | Likewise sodium batteries are not made of sodium. There's 13x | more iron in them than sodium. There may also be large | amounts of manganese or vanadium. The cost of manufacturing | is also higher per kWh. | asow92 wrote: | This sort of misses the point of sodium ion batteries | though, no? One of the main objections to lithium ion | batteries is the need for cobalt because of how it's | sourced through "artisanal mining" in Africa. | coryrc wrote: | LFP has no cobalt. | scottLobster wrote: | Lithium batteries are made of lithium to a point that there | is a lithium supply bottleneck if we want to use lithium- | ion batteries as the base chemistry for the green | transition. | | It will take time to mass produce things regardless, but I | imagine Sodium has far fewer bottlenecks. | epistasis wrote: | There is no lithium bottleneck, we merely haven't even | bothered to catalog all the lithium that is easily | accessible. | specialist wrote: | Yes and: No long term shortage with occasional short term | crunches. Mostly due to lag time bringing new supplies | online. | | Like with every commodity market. | jandrese wrote: | The lithium bottleneck idea comes from people who go | "looking at the current lithium supply we would run short | if we instantly started producing 10x as many batteries | as we do today", completely ignoring how markets work. | | It's great if we can get a chemistry that avoids the need | for lithium, but it won't be a showstopper if we don't. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | Is the lifespan of sodium-ion better than Li-ion? | aredox wrote: | Depends on the anode | fransje26 wrote: | They claim 2'000 cycles for their current 18650s, which, | I believe, is about twice that of li-ions? | rootusrootus wrote: | "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 wrote: | With the moves in places like California to curtail the value | prospect of net metering for solar (particularly during peak | hours), home storage is becoming more and more important. But | I don't especially like the idea of big lithium batteries | around the house ... particularly because I live in a flood | zone. | apexalpha wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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-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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | Volume also matters. | AtlasBarfed wrote: | 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. | slfnflctd wrote: | > "carbon externality charge" of $5000 on a new ICE as well, | or something that scales with the carbon inefficiency of the | vehicle | | Your whole writeup was inspiring and gives me more hope for | the future. This part, though, I'm angry about. I'm angry | that we don't already have this legislation in some form. I'm | sure it will be fought tooth & nail by the big auto | manufacturers, but we should do it anyway. Maybe we could | tack on higher penalties for anyone caught 'rolling coal', | too. | hedora wrote: | It should be a bit more than $5000. However, prepare to be | even angrier: | | Burning a gallon of gas generates 20lbs of CO2 (most of the | weight is the O2), so 100 gallons produces a ton. Direct | air carbon capture should cost roughly $100 per ton at | scale, so the fee should be $1/gallon of gasoline (either | at vehicle purchase or at the pump). | | That's completely affordable and lower than current | gasoline taxes in many places. | | If we made that one change (and funneled the revenue into | carbon capture) existing ICE cars could be carbon negative | in 5-10 years, and, as we phased them out (because EVs are | just better) we'd have a clear path to pre-industrial | atmospheric CO2. | adrianN wrote: | With what process can you capture and permanently store | carbon from the atmosphere for that price? | em500 wrote: | The EU mandates a minimum EUR0.36/L excise tax on | gasoline, which is about $1.49/gallon. In practice many | large countries like Germany, France, Italy already levy | more than $3/gallon. But they certainly don't funnel the | revenue into carbon capture. | jabl wrote: | The sort of obvious way is to slap on a decent carbon tax | on fuels. But of course that is fought tooth and nail by a | lot on entrenched interests. | | Even here in ostensibly progressive Europe, populist | parties are riding on "Cheap gas!!!". | NickNameNick wrote: | New Zealand has a scheme (soon to expire with the change in | government) for this. | | Low efficiency vehicles are taxed on import, and the money | raised is returned as rebates on high efficiency vehicles. | | A Ford Ranger might attract the full fee, a new t Nissan | leaf would get the full credit. A small ICE car attracts a | smaller fee. Hybrids are given a smaller credit. | | The exact amount of credit varied over time as the fees | gathered changed. | specialist wrote: | Agree with all. Especially this: | | > _So the revolution is coming, in my opinion._ | | Yes and: The nascent thermal batteries (box of hot rocks) and | advanced geothermal power generation are _just now_ crossing | the chasm. | | Both tech stacks have been proven, have financing, and | initial customers. | | And now they're jumping on to the cost learning curve. | | Roughly, thermal tech today is where solar and batteries were | in the 2000s. | | The will be huge because 1/2 of energy consumption ends up as | heat. So skip all the middle steps. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | > LiPho | | LiPho? Are you thinking of LiFePO4, aka LFP? | PaulKeeble wrote: | 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 wrote: | > 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | wg0 wrote: | Full of adjectives. More cost efficient, more this and more that | but no mention how much more and more to what exactly. | | Now the articles "This could be in your next EV sooner than you | think." would be already being composed and YouTube videos being | edited. | perlgeek wrote: | I share your frustration. Nothing about charge cycles, and | "safety at high temperatures" is less interesting than an | actual operating range specification. | gniv wrote: | Here's an article from June with more details about the current | status of sodium-ion batteries (in China): | https://carnewschina.com/2023/06/07/lei-xing-is-catls-sodium... | | Note that CATL also claimed 160Wh/kg two years ago, but what | they will actually be making will probably be closer to 120. | LeanderK wrote: | finally some battery innovation from europe. Makes one hopeful | that we will continue to play a role in the battery | energy/automotive space in the future. | xxs wrote: | The Li-Ion and 2019 Chemistry Nobel prize went jointly to a | British, American and Japan citizens. _The Nobel Prize in | Chemistry 2019 was awarded jointly to John B. Goodenough, M. | Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino "for the development of | lithium-ion batteries" _[0] | | [0]: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/summary/ | LeanderK wrote: | but nobel prizes are usually for basic research a long time | ago and the battery-electric automotive revolution is | relatively recent development, where applied research and | bringing new batteries to market is more important | lnsru wrote: | No. Because there is no difference who makes an interior or | motors or battery anymore. There is no real difference in BYD | dolphin, Kia eNiro and VW ID.3. Except price maybe. Internal | combustion engine was once the differentiator. And it's gone. | nine_k wrote: | There may be little difference in the finished device. But | there is a big difference in the logistics, securing a steady | supply, political complications that may interfere with that, | etc. On the supply side, there is a difference in expertise | and jobs. | LeanderK wrote: | i think battery tech can be a real differentiator | hedora wrote: | The engine hasn't been a differentiator for a long time. | | The rest of the power train, suspension, frame, etc matter | more these days. | konstantinua00 wrote: | Shin, this is 7th week in the row you've shown new battery | invention to the class | | --- | | but honestly, what's the deal with same-y headlines about | batteries? can we have articles that actually keep observing | these technologies as they progress after being invented? | romanovcode wrote: | Exactly. Where can I actually BUY these batteries that would | fit to AA, AAA etc.. | xxs wrote: | Retrofitting is =dumb=, like very dumb. The nominal voltages | are different to begin with. However not that only - | retrofitting in general is not a bright idea: case in point | LEDs into E27/E17 incandescent fixtures. | benj111 wrote: | Why not? | | In the case of bulbs you could get a better form factor, | but no one's doing that, they're just using non replaceable | bulbs. | | Batteries. Are you going to get rid of your TV just so you | can use a different battery chemistry? There have been | various chemistries available in AA. Would you rather we | have even more battery sizes to keep track of? | xxs wrote: | > Why not? | | B/c the LEDs require a driver which runs on DC [the | better case is constant driven], the space constraints | are too high and there is not enough room for heat | dissipation which in the US kills the driver (as running | on 110/120AC is less efficient), and in Europe it tends | to kill the LEDs because they get to be overdriven, but | the driver dissipates less heat. The power factor on all | them tends to be atrocious, usually 0.5phi. They tend to | quite noisy, esp. when it comes to EMF. In short there is | not enough space to have a decent LED driver along with | enough space for heat dissipation for the LEDs (usually | only 15%, being generous, of the energy will be emitted | as light. The rest is heat, so if you see 8W of LED, more | than 6.5W is just heat) | | Pretty much almost all LEDs you can buy in a retrofit | case are almost guaranteed to be overdirven to show | better numbers and be 'brighter'. Near ceiling larger | fixtures can be designed for LEDs. They tend to have an | actual 15-30k hours lifespan. | | Dimming the LEDs is the next atrocity, esp. when it comes | to chopping the sine wave. The LED dirvers have to work | with the chopped sine wave and detect how much it has | been chopped to reduce the current or the PWM. | | About the AA(A) and the TV. I can control the TV w/ | bluetooth and an app but I find that incovenient. However | NiMH nominal voltage is 1.2V which fits the 1.5 of the | alkaline batteries. It's good enough already. So yes, it | takes different chemistry unless the remote controls | provide built-in step-up/step-down converters, | effectively variable operational voltage. | benj111 wrote: | I think it's more a case of enshitification. | | The first LEDs I got were metal bodied. | | One of them has gone in the past 10 years. So they must | be around that lower bound by now. | | Tbf I don't think subsequent ones have been too bad. | | Re your TV. Ok your TV might be, my TV isn't, and I have | plenty of other remotes, and then there's clocks and | weighing scales and kids toys and all the other things | that use aa batteries. | xxs wrote: | > I think it's more a case of enshitification.The first | LEDs I got were metal bodied. | | The heavier the better when it comes to such LEDs. Yes, | it's possible to make them work okayish, and control the | temps (LEDs should not go over 60C) but that would show | poor lumens (and watts) on the box, and be expensive. | rootusrootus wrote: | Most of this problem becomes a non-issue with the advent | of LED filament bulbs. That's pretty close to the holy | grail IMO. | | And besides, making everyone change every fixture in | their house in order to take advantage of LED would just | have meant it never happened. E26/E27 bulbs are going to | be around for a while. | xxs wrote: | >LED filament bulbs. | | Just lots of LEDs in series with higher target forward | voltage. Still, LEDs are current driven devices and quite | temperature sensitive, and still need a driver. The | issues are not that different. | | >That's pretty close to the holy grail IMO. | | I guess we have a very different idea about the grail, | then. | rootusrootus wrote: | We probably do. I like that filament bulbs have much | smaller driver requirements and much better heat | dissipation, and I can stuff 100W bulbs into enclosures | without worry. The only thing I don't love is that they | are somewhat more prone to flicker. Not enough that my | eyes notice, but some might. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | Dumb is a feature. If less things are there to defeat, we | can change or fix the thing so it works and lasts much | longer. Smart is an anti-feature. | masklinn wrote: | Modern chemistries don't really do 1.5V (nominals are usually | above 3V), so you need to package a buck and a boost | converter alongside your cell(s). There are li-ion and LFP | batteries in alkaline formats but they're hardly going to be | ideal, you're probably better off going with 18650. | aaronmdjones wrote: | On the other hand, it's quite rare that a tool takes a | single 1.5V cell. Many of them will take 2 or 4, and then | you can make a double form factor 3V cell that will fit in | most double AA holders. | | I've also seen manufacturers who make 3V or 3.2V cells in | AA format, and then supply a dummy AA-shaped link with it, | which is just a straight-through connection like a wire. | Put one cell and one link in your tool, or two cells and | two links. | jve wrote: | > dummy AA-shaped link with it | | Can't find on Amazon. Care to share or make a photo | please? | aaronmdjones wrote: | https://kk.org/cooltools/dummy-batteries/ | ForkMeOnTinder wrote: | If you're using these, be 100% sure your device connects | the batteries in series, not in parallel, or you'll have | a mess on your hands. | aaronmdjones wrote: | Yes, the page does mention this. | vikramkr wrote: | I don't think anyone is intending to or wants to develop new | batteries for consumer applications like that. The point here | is large scale energy storage and maybe EVs which could be | the closest thing to consumer tech. Lithium vaee batteries | started development in the 1970s so that gives you an idea of | the order of magnitude of the timeline. Hopefully that cycle | is shorter now due to greater upfront interest and better | tech | est wrote: | China sells them on Alibaba, not packed in AA/AAA but 18650. | | Review here https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1c34y1N7NU/ | pulse7 wrote: | Can we have a webpage with (1) all basic battery tech | information and (2) updated progress for each new battery type? | m463 wrote: | can that webpage have an RSS feed, and a subscribable .ics | file? | culi wrote: | what metrics could you use for "progress"? Maybe a crowd- | sourced thing where users can update the highest achieved | density for each? Still there's other measures that are | probably even more important and harder to measure. Like | adoption | | EDIT: actually I just realized I'm describing Wikipedia | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery#Comparison | s0rce wrote: | like NREL did(does?) for solar https://www.nrel.gov/pv/cell- | efficiency.html | gniv wrote: | Sodium-ion is real. Here's more news from China: | https://carnewschina.com/2023/11/20/sodium-ion-batteries-are... | | It's not widely touted since the density is not as good, the | Northvolt announcement notwithstanding. But the costs | apparently are much lower. | _fizz_buzz_ wrote: | > the density is not as good | | This can of course mean that this is a game changer for | stationary storage, because density is not as much a concern. | mlinhares wrote: | Yup, looking forward to using this as backup storage at | home. | apitman wrote: | Could it be good for deep cycle batteries for cars as | well? | hnburnsy wrote: | 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 the time it ships li-ion advances will match it. | bagels wrote: | I'm interested in $/kWh, that is the most limiting factor for | cars. | dathinab wrote: | volume/kWh also matters for car use-cases (but especially for | less high end cars not as much as kg/kWh) | | $/kWh is mainly affected by: material cost, manufacturing cost, | cost of safely using it (e.g. shielding but also e.g. fire | insurances), replacement cost (lifetime, frequency of repairs, | needs full replacement for repairs?, refurbish-ability etc.) | | As far as I can tell the material and safety cost should be | much and somewhat cheaper, the manufacturing cost is hard to | say but initially is likely more expensive as it's a new | process and the durability and refurbish-ability are probably | major points which will decide weather it's competitive in the | vehicle market or not. | maven29 wrote: | Will Volume/kWh really matter if they use the battery also as | a major structural component? Doesn't skateboard chassis | require structural reinforcement even at the cell level? | dathinab wrote: | It can because even "skateboard chassis" have limited | volume. | | For high end e-cars the maximal reach tends to matter a | lot, even if for some buyers it only matters in | advertisements. | | For less high end cars they often anyway compromise on | range so it might not matter as much but then in many | places (which are not in the US) having small cars matters | a lot to a point that sometimes e.g. typical SUVs might not | be usable _at all_, and I mean EU style SUVs not US style | SUVs (through most times its just very inconvenient). And | small cars mean little space for batteries (potential only | 50% of the space). | | Lastly there are some aspects of different styles of | "skateboard chassis" having different usable volumes for | battery cells. And some especially save and refurbishable | chassis designs come with the penalty of having a bit less | volume to use. | | So the answer is very dependent on the context. | h7KP4 wrote: | Headline number (160Wh/kg) is the same as CATL achieved in | mid-2021 with Na-Ion chemistry [1] | | [1] https://www.catl.com/en/news/665.html | torginus wrote: | What are the advantages of sodium batteries? | | Since batteries involve the migration of ions between electrodes, | the much larger size of sodium ions means that the resulting | batteries will be both less dense and have less charge cycles | than their lithium counterparts, due to the higher volumetric | electrode deformation during charging. | | This makes them suboptimal for both grid and mobile applications, | and the only use case I can see for them is making very cheap | disposable stuff, which does not bode well for the environment. | kzrdude wrote: | Sodium is easier to find | torginus wrote: | Yeah, but lithium isn't exactly rare either. | raverbashing wrote: | Actually not at the rates we're predicted to use it, no | | And yes Sodium is fine for most applications where it can | be a little heavier (grid uses, maybe cars) which is where | most of it is projected to be needed. | jvm___ wrote: | https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/s/Co4zeAhcmT | | Here's how much of everything we mined in 2022. Lithium is | bottom left corner just above Gold. | varjag wrote: | Since Li kg price is not anywhere near to that of gold, | the production is likely demand-constrained. | oddmiral wrote: | Lithium price jumped 6x in 2020-2022. | | https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev- | outlook-2023/trends-in... | ranting-moth wrote: | Which production (save for byproducts) today isn't demand | constrained? | xxs wrote: | But cobalt is (which is the basis of the 'classic' Li-Ion). | Of course, LiFePO4 doesn't require it. | drtgh wrote: | Lithium is abundant, as are other "rare earths" (they are | not rare), but the problem is that they are quite scattered | and to extract them nowadays requires to process very large | areas of land through chemical reactions (additives and | evaporation). | victorbjorklund wrote: | Compared to what? Sodium? | culi wrote: | I hope this doesn't come off as combatative, but I don't | know why people keep repeating this fun fact from their | highschool chemistry class as if it's relevant to the | discussion. | | Per a 2023 Nature article: | https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-022-00387-5 | | > The locations of suitable continental brines are also | geographically restricted, with an estimated 50-85% of | lithium-rich continental brine deposits located in the | Lithium Triangle and with China as the next richest source. | Hard-rock ores are also geographically concentrated in | Australia and China | | Lithium in a form that is economical to mine/process is | indeed quite rare. Which is why 3 countries produce 90% of | it. | | And it is extremely environmentally costly which is treated | as an economic externality. It takes 1.9m litres to mine | one ton of lithium and solvent chemicals like hydrochloric | acid contaminates groundwater, making the entire site toxic | and unlivable. | | Entire governments have been overthrown for access to this | resource. | anonuser123456 wrote: | Lithium mines are hard to build (capital intensive, | permitting, water availability), and there aren't enough to | satisfy demand. | xbmcuser wrote: | sodium batteries are safer as well when it comes to fire and | explosion etc | lazide wrote: | Metallic sodium is quite reactive? | Aardwolf wrote: | From reading the comments, seems like it would be useful for | battery power storage in the home (since it's cheaper and | safer, and weight doesn't matter), but not great for a car yet | (since it weighs more) | torginus wrote: | Not that good for storage either, because of lower cycles | than Lithium (which is already low anyway) | lazide wrote: | Huh? 5k cycles is huge? | ranting-moth wrote: | It's a daily recharge for over 13 years. I don't remember | having a battery lasting that long. | lazide wrote: | Yup. LiFePo batteries are now starting to have lifetimes | that long (or longer), but they haven't been in the field | for long enough that people can notice yet. | jillesvangurp wrote: | Upsides: Cheap, safe, no hard to source materials. Relatively | high amount of cycles (> 5000). | | Downsides: somewhat low energy density, somewhat less | efficient. | | CATL has been producing sodium ion batteries for some time. I | think most of those so far end up in cheap Chinese EVs. | Relatively few of those have found their way to the European or | North American markets yet. Part of the reason is probably the | lack of sodium ion battery factories outside of China (so far). | It looks like Northvolt is looking to change that. | | It's competing with LFP and other battery chemistries. You'd | use these mainly for cheap cars and possibly for grid storage. | twobitshifter wrote: | Price, number of cycles, weight, and temperature are the | advantages as far as I remember. | twobitshifter wrote: | maybe not weight. | fulafel wrote: | In the majority of applications outside consumer electronics, | the bottleneck problem with Li-Ion batteries is their cost and | manufacturing resource intensity. We're lacking cheaper and | easier to mfg options compromising on some qualities. | sylario wrote: | This summer a French company started to sell sodium ion battery | power tool in a major hardware store. | | National French research agency announcement: | https://www.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/batteries-sodium-ion-une-pre... | | The power tool : | https://www.leroymerlin.fr/produits/outillage/outillage-elec... | | Unfortunately, all I could found about the Wh/kg efficiency was | an article about the same company saying they were currently able | to build cells at 90Wh/Kg in 2017. | | Nevertheless, it's not a promise, it's a product currently on | sale. | IgorPartola wrote: | The entire product weighs 0.5 kg, and it is 0.7A at 3.6V. I | assume the amp rating is really amp-hours, which would give it | 2.52Wh. Figure the battery is half the weight of the tool, | which would give it roughly 10Wh/kg. | sylario wrote: | The spec sheet on the store is confusing. It says : | | Intensity(Ah) Less than 1.5 | | Tension (V) 3.6 | | Amperage (Ah) 0.7 | | Edit : the box indicate 0.33 Kg, the 0.5 weight probably | include the charger and other parts. | masklinn wrote: | According to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/ab | s/pii/S03787... the batteries Tiamat produces are 18650 | format, 3.7V, 0.61Ah. The latter more or less matches the | specs of the product. This would mean the product might have | a single 34g battery with a specific energy of 68Wh/kg, and | 135Wh/L. So low end of nimh. Which sounds somewhat | reasonable, 10 (and around 20Wh/L) I don't think you'd bother | even going forwards with. | | Sadly I can't find any teardown of the product, it's all just | press reprints. | | There's a split view PDF (in the documents section), it | doesn't seem to show the battery but does not show a huge | amount of space for it. | aredox wrote: | I got the same 68 Wh/kg from this report: https://www.green | carcongress.com/2023/10/20231030-tiamat.htm... | foobarian wrote: | Low end of Nimh doesn't sound very great, but - what if you | could get 18650 cells for (making up a small number) $0.50 | each? I think I would end up with a box full and just swap | them as I use them. Even better if they retain charge well. | aredox wrote: | It has other great advantages over NiMH: fast charging, | no memory effect, no self-discharge | foobarian wrote: | Absolutely! However my baseline are my Li-ion 18650 cells | which have those advantages as well, in addition to | larger capacity. But I think I would be willing to give | up the capacity if the price was much lower. | orangepurple wrote: | NiMH doesn't have noticable memory effect. NiCd does. | tzs wrote: | NiMH self-discharge is low enough to not matter for most | applications. 5th generation Panasonic Eneloop is 90% | after 1 year of storage, 80% after 3 years, 75% after 5 | years, and 70% after 10 years. | rich_sasha wrote: | How much of that weight is the essential weight of the | battery, and how much is consumer-friendly outer shell, | electronics, other one-offs etc.? I.e. if you wanted to take | the same tech, put it in a non-consumer-facing context (say a | grid-scale battery) and wanted to make it 100x the capacity, | would it be 100x the weight? | | I can imagine a lot of the weight of the battery unit itself | isn't necessarily the battery, if that makes sense. | hbossy wrote: | It's the first time a captcha tool flagged me as robot and | banned from their site. | tacker2000 wrote: | Same here | j-a-a-p wrote: | 00100011 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101111 01101111 | dylan604 wrote: | They're French. They don't care about your suffering <puffs | on cigarette> | TomK32 wrote: | I didn't even get to a captcha | computerfriend wrote: | > There is a robot on the same network [...] as you. | frafra wrote: | They are banning entire countries (violating the EU geo- | blocking directive as well, probably). | ChumpGPT wrote: | Banned for using a VPN. | metadat wrote: | I got banned and am not even using a VPN! Overly aggressive | bot protection. | toomuchtodo wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20231121142135/https://www.cnrs.... | | https://web.archive.org/web/20231121142300/https://www.leroy... | fransje26 wrote: | > company saying they were currently able to build cells at | 90Wh/Kg in 2017. | | I found an article from 2021 where they were claiming 90Wh/kg | to 120Wh/kg, and that they would not go beyond that. They argue | that their strength is fast charging, not high energy density, | with charges to full capacity in less than 10 minutes. | | https://www.ecinews.fr/fr/tiamat-energy-lance-la-production-... | speed_spread wrote: | In a vehicle, "fast charging" is not just convenience, it | means you can use a smaller, _lighter_ battery having less | autonomy but knowing that you can refill it in a few minutes | stop. It doesn't make range anxiety go away completely but it | makes long trips practical. | system2 wrote: | Not necessarily. You must have those fast chargers | conveniently placed on your route. I can't even imagine | going to Vegas from LA with an electric car currently. | RandallBrown wrote: | LA to Vegas is about 270 miles, which is under the 333 | mile estimated range of a Tesla Model 3. | | I'm sure under normal conditions, 270 miles would be | cutting it pretty close, if it even makes it there at | all. Luckily there are 10 supercharges along the way. | | Not sure how it is for non-teslas, but I'm guessing at | least a few of those places with superchargers also have | chargers that will work with other kinds of cars. | sroussey wrote: | There are not so many and the chances of them working are | a coin flip. | | Driving through the desert on an open road is not | conducive to efficiency. It's hot, need AC blasting. It's | an open road--drive fast! (Or it's bumper to bumper for | 10 hours). | mlhpdx wrote: | Think about what that means as to a practical limit, | today. How many cars per day can make that trip assuming | they have to recharge once along the way? It's far from a | solved problem even on that route. | | I love electric cars. I've been drawing pictures of them | thinking about them and waiting for them for a long time. | And, I am very grateful for those that made them a | reality. That said, I'm also pragmatic. Where we are | today versus where we need to be to make them practical | for a large portion of the population is sublime. | lazide wrote: | If it's impossible to charge the battery in less than 30 | minutes, that changes the dynamics of charging a _lot_. | speed_spread wrote: | Exactly. But if two ten minute stops in Barstow and Baker | was all it took to make it possible with a cheaper | electric car, a lot more people would consider it. Anyway | you'll need to stop for a piss. | kposehn wrote: | As another commenter pointed out, LA to LV is actually | doable with a number of current on sale EVs, with a | decent size range buffer left behind after the trip. | Furthermore, there are several fast chargers on the route | in Hesperia, Barstow and Baker. | IntelMiner wrote: | You must have gas stations conveniently placed on your | route. I can't even imagine going to Vegas from LA | without a horse and buggy currently | | The last part felt a little mean-spirited in retrospect. | But my intention was to point out that you're just | describing a lack of infrastructure yet | | Once we build this stuff it's * _there for use*_ and just | has the usual burdens of maintenance. Arguably less since | we don 't need to transport big trucks full of oil to it | regularly | lazide wrote: | Sure, but complaining that someone is noticing the real | infrastructure issues doesn't mean they don't exist right | now? | | Not everyone wants to bleed so they can be on the | bleeding edge. | jandrese wrote: | There is no lack of charging infrastructure between LA | and LV. | | https://supercharge.info/map | | If you were talking about LA to La Paz then there is a | real concern about making it, but LA to LV is no problem | at all. | Animats wrote: | The big advantage of fast charging is that charging | stations are smaller. With hours-long charging, everyone | needs a parking place with a charger. With 20-30 minute | charging, you need a big lot with parking stalls and | something for people to do for 20-30 minutes. With 10 | minute charging, you're almost at gas station throughput. | With 5 minute charging, you're at gas station throughput | levels. | | As I wrote a few days ago, once charging is below 10 | minutes, charging stations work just like gas stations in | terms of throughput. We will see gas stations converting | directly from gas pumps to chargers. (Unclear if gas pumps | can coexist near high-powered chargers; gasoline vapor and | high voltage electricity should not be in the same space.) | unwind wrote: | I was banned from the second site (like many other commenters), | and got a chuckle from how switching the first from FR to EN | did not, in fact, translate the actual content. | | Silly me for expecting that, I guess. | alentred wrote: | Interesting. The second web site cites a number of advantages | of the sodium-ion battery: | | > Sodium is 10 times faster to charge than lithium, and safer | because of its low operating temperature. The number of | recharging cycles is up to 5 times greater than lithium. | Another advantage is that sodium is more widely available and | accessible on the planet, and its processing has less impact on | the environment. | boringg wrote: | Whats the ramp up ramp down time? How much energy throughput | before degradation? Can we improve that density furthermore? | Cost? | | If those are all good answers ostensibly some viable alternative. | kaliszad wrote: | This is a good development, but it falls really short of the | almost 3.5 kWh that would be possible to achieve with sodium | metal fuel cell. Such device is described in the expired patent | US3730776A (copy available here: | https://orgpad.com/file/DrCoHGH6xJJqraDeusqrtS?token=D6S5Bow...) | A similar device producing electrical current can be constructed | in a garage. | nine_k wrote: | The point is not energy density, or momentary power. The point | is _low price_ and immediate availability. | | There is a lot of solar and wind electricity wasted in the | world because there's no economical way to store it. LiFePO4 | batteries are > $100 / kWh, last time I checked; a practical | powerwall costs like a small car, and is also a major fire | hazard. | | We badly need _cheap_ , non-toxic, non-flammable batteries we | could deploy massively outside of cars, drones, and phones. The | announced battery looks like something that may fit the bill. | DanielHB wrote: | Northvolt also acquired Cuberg who are researching lithium- | metal chemistries | | https://cuberg.net/ | | sodium-ion is about low cost for stationary applications (grid | scale ESS) where weight and size don't matter as much | Uptrenda wrote: | After all the OpenAI stuff I've just started reading drama into | all these head lines. Like I read this as: 'North Korea develops | state-of-the-art sodium-ion...' I am expecting something to | happen now... OpenAI literally broke my brain... | xbmcuser wrote: | China is going to bring into production from this year a lot of | sodium ion batteries. For me the weight and density of the | batteries is not as important as recharge cycles and cost as that | would price out more carbon producing electricity generation | | https://carnewschina.com/2023/11/20/sodium-ion-batteries-are... | jansan wrote: | There are sodium ion batteries available at aliexpress. The | claimed advantges (written in an unintentially comical way) | are: | | - better safety | | - same number of cycles as LiFePo | | - much better capacity at low temperatures | | - protects environment (?) | | I would take that with a truckload of salt. Also, price is | roughly 50% higher than LiFePo. | | On many product images there is an outdoor winter scenery. So | performance at very low temperatures seems to be the main | selling point. | rootusrootus wrote: | LFPs do more cycles and are still cheaper. Sodium ion isn't | going to make much of a dent in that market until the price can | get below LFP. | xbmcuser wrote: | Yeah but prices wont have the same kind of fluctuations as | lithium does because of demand and supply. And as | manufacturing picks up economies of scale should start | bringing the price down | prawn wrote: | Are any of these developing battery chemistries likely to become | very affordable to the point that future houses are built with | cellar-sized batteries stored underneath them? | chrsw wrote: | There's another thread going on HN right now about limiting the | charge of Li-ion batteries to 20%-80% of thier capacity. Do | batteries based on Na-ion chemistry have this | limitation/recommendation? | mmmwww wrote: | Thats fairly good and typical i think. Lead acid and AGM | batteries are not recommended to be below 50% of their | capacity. | Roark66 wrote: | So where is the catch? Because there is always a catch. It's | either that it needs a tiny amount of extremely expensive | ingredients (palladium?), or it requires extremely advanced | manufacturing techniques? Or its both cheap and easy to make but | the mass production makes way too many failures... | | There is always something... Therefore I'll believe it when I'm | able to but such battery and fly my drone with it. | EspressoGPT wrote: | This. You need to take any battery-related news with a rather | heavy grain of salt, especially when it comes to "solid state" | or "sodium" headlines. | lsaferite wrote: | > heavy grain of salt > "solid state" or "sodium" | | This made me chuckle a little. Thanks! | ngrilly wrote: | The catch is lower gravimetric energy density (Wh/kg). But | sodium-ion is great for stationary energy storage, where | gravimetric energy density doesn't matter that much (unlike | automotive, aviation, or handheld tools). | | Disclaimer: I'm a former Northvolter, but not involved in that | program. | masklinn wrote: | 160Wh/kg is not super impressive in the first place, that's the | low end of li-ion although it is the high end of nimh. The | energy density (energy per volume) is also unlisted so might | not be great. | | For reference northvolt also lists lithium-metal batteries at | 395Wh/kg, and they _do_ list the density on that one, 797Wh /L. | When they acquired the designer (cubert) back in 2021 they | listed the possibility of exceeding 1000Wh/L by 2025 though I | don't know if that's still in the plans (at the times the cells | were only listed at 369Wh/kg as well). | 1970-01-01 wrote: | This is just another announcement. The catch remains unchanged. | Engineering all the details of anode, cathode, electrolyte | packaging, and manufacturing scale still needs to meet and also | prove itself in the real world. | elzbardico wrote: | Have anyone noticed that most technological breakthroughs in | fields that require hard physical sciences seem to come from | foreign countries? | ben_w wrote: | I don't know which country you _don 't_ consider "foreign", but | even if you're in the largest one by population, 82% of the | world is foreign. | elzbardico wrote: | in the context of most of HN, unless noted otherwise, I think | it is safe to parse foreign country as 'national entities | other than the US'. | rootusrootus wrote: | Is John Goodenough not good enough for you? | | Too bad he has recently passed, though. | mensetmanusman wrote: | This is about 0.5 MJ/kg compared to fuel which is closer to 50 | MJ/kg ( or closer to 10 when normalizing to efficiency). ie this | is why ev batteries need 20x the weight of gasoline at least to | store similar amounts of on board energy. | est wrote: | except fuels burns only once and can't be recharged | ifdefdebug wrote: | Yet modern EV cars and ICE cars have similar range autonomy | without carrying batteries worth 20x the weight of gasoline, | due to the abyssal efficiency of combustion engines which | produce mostly heat. | hedora wrote: | It is pretty close to a 20x difference, but they make up most | of that on the lack of gas tank and engine, and lower range. | (EV's tended to weigh 600lbs more the last time I checked). | ZeroGravitas wrote: | Someone should build an EV that shreds the empty batteries | and ejects them into the face of passing schoolchildren to | lighten the load and better recreate the health and | environmental impacts of ICE vehicles. | alkonaut wrote: | EVs don't need to store the same amount of energy as an ICE car | though. Just enough to get _as far_ would be more than enough | energy. Twice the motor efficiency and the fact that ICE 's | don't regenerate fuel when breaking helps even it a bit. | thelastgallon wrote: | For stationary batteries, density (Wh/kg) and volume (Wh/liter) | are not a concern, only Wh/$. These sodium-ion batteries can be | deployed for grid connected storage (or home batteries like | powerwall), freeing up Lithium for EVs. | megaman821 wrote: | It is probably good to have a sodium battery industry to hedge | against high lithium prices. For our current and projected needs | there is probably enough lithium on earth. Here is a chart of | what we mine https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-metals-we- | mined-in-... | trebligdivad wrote: | Why is 'Prussian white' a nice blue? (as shown in Northvolt's pic | at the bottom) | rootusrootus wrote: | Because that's not Prussian white, it's Prussian blue. The | white version is derived from the blue. | havkom wrote: | Northvolts PR department seems to historically be very sharp. In | addition they seem to want to announce many things, like a co- | operation to create batteries from wood (the wooden industry is | large in Sweden so probably many very important people working at | the top of those companies): | https://northvolt.com/articles/stora-enso-and-northvolt/ | | In that light, I wonder how this press release should be | interpreted. | photochemsyn wrote: | Original research article this development appears to be based on | was published in 2015 is available on sci-hub, just paste the | title in: | | Rhombohedral Prussian White as Cathode for Rechargeable Sodium- | Ion Batteries | | It's notable that it was an ARPA-E funded project and some of the | research was done at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. It's more | applied research than basic research as they were specifically | looking for a setup that would work with existing battery | manufacturing technology. | | > "Compared with previous work, the high Na concentration in the | new material overcomes the sodium-deficiency problem. We show | that it could be directly assembled into a full cell with a hard | carbon anode. This is critical for the scalable sodium-ion | battery manufacture that is compatible with the current lithium- | ion battery infrastructures." | | Interesting timeline: from publication of research result to | commercial development to deliverable product, ~8 years. Now, | would a VC fund think that was a decent turnaround time - I | really don't know, any opinions? | acyou wrote: | Beware of battery technology announcements that only give a | single parameter! They have usually made drastic tradeoffs in | other areas in order to get the headline number. | | And we are left to only speculate. But, if the other numbers were | great, they would have also stated them. | kurthr wrote: | It's still less than half Lion and not quite as good as current | LiFePo or NMC. | | Hope springs eternal. | kristjank wrote: | Even if it performs worse, the abundance of minerals required to | construct this type of cell is a good news for sustainability, | given we figure out how to recycle them. I imagine it should be | easier, or at least less dirty than lithium. | danans wrote: | Another technology to watch is silicon anode Lithium-ion | batteries (Amprius, Sila, Group 14) which have been demonstrated | at 400-500Wh/kg. | | Matt Ferrell's Undecided Youtube channel just posted a video | today going over that technology: | https://youtu.be/YJ4pg_exdvs?si=kKNE-yY-Va9xMuBf | s0rce wrote: | And Enovix | staticelf wrote: | Pretty cool, go sweden! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-21 23:00 UTC)