[HN Gopher] Na-S Battery: Low-cost with four times the capacity ...
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Na-S Battery: Low-cost with four times the capacity of lithium
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 262 points
Date : 2022-12-15 12:07 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sydney.edu.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sydney.edu.au)
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Seems to be a legitimate advance in a long-disregarded battery
| tech, I'd be very happy if this ends up reducing lithium mining.
| danuker wrote:
| Indeed, and it might also drive down prices. Sodium and sulphur
| are much more abundant than Lithium (1150x and 260x
| respectively).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
| flavius29663 wrote:
| This wiki page has a surprising graph https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
|
| The "rare earths" are actually just as common as Si. It just
| shows we won't be running out of them anytime soon, it's just
| a matter of finding ways to extract them.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Si is the symbol for silicon, which is the second most
| abundant element in the Earth's crust (after oxygen.) The
| REEs are certainly not as abundant as that. Si is 270,000
| ppm; cerium is 60 ppm.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| You're right, I'm dumb, the graph is 0 at 10^6 Si. So
| rare earths are 1 million times more rare than Si. It's
| similar to copper and Nickel though
| squarefoot wrote:
| Although, by looking at the places where they are more
| abundant, I wouldn't be too optimist, at least with the
| current geopolitical climate.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/277268/rare-earth-
| reserv...
| ojbyrne wrote:
| I'm not sure how you're interpreting that graph, because Si
| (Silicon) and Na are orders of magnitude more common than
| the rare earths. You might have missed that it's a
| logarithmic scale.
| usrusr wrote:
| Is the material that ends up in the cell a significant part
| of the cost? If steel was free, ICE cars could be _dozens of
| dollars_ cheaper than they are. I guess material costs are a
| much bigger factor in batteries, but in many other products
| is so low that "much bigger" could still be tiny.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Does the 1150 take into account all the oceans full of NaCl?
| It sounds a little low.
| ddulaney wrote:
| Sodium and sulphur are very cheap and easy to get, but not
| because of this.
|
| Sulphur is a byproduct of lots of different industrial
| processes, usually oil refining.
|
| Sodium is most commonly extracted from seawater.
|
| Frequency of elements in Earth's crust is a pretty poor
| approximation for how easy they are to mine.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| Imagine a desalination process funded in part by producing
| battery-grade sodium.
|
| All you practical people who wait until there is real world
| manufacturing promise are missing out on the pleasure of wild
| imagination.
| jfengel wrote:
| Imagination is great, but there's a blurry line between
| "imagine a thing and make it happen" and "tell happy stories
| instead of working".
|
| One belongs in science journals; the other belongs in
| Astounding Stories. Both have their place, and there's even
| some overlap, but it's no surprise that grumpiness occurs
| when the conversation crosses that blurry line too far (in
| either direction).
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| "we're all doomed"
|
| "wait, there's a new battery tech that could solve some of
| the long-standing problems with moving to a clean-energy
| abundant civilisation, and yesterday they achieved fusion
| ignition for the first time"
|
| "bah, these are all rubbish and will never make any
| difference, we're still all doomed"
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| Yes. The electrification movement isn't any "green" if you take
| into account the impact of current battery technology.
|
| PS: the impact of battery _technology_ - I'm not only talking
| about mining but the entire cycle: usable life, reverse
| logistics, disposal and recycling, dealing w / water and soil
| contamination.
| adrr wrote:
| Lithium on earth is in salt form. Most coming from dry salt
| beds in South America. Big US project is to extract it from
| the Salton sea. Fracking is much worse and contaminates water
| tables not to mention all the methane releases that cause
| global warming.
| kragen wrote:
| you're out of date, half of current lithium production is
| hard rock mining of spodumene in australia
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| So its not fossil fuel funded climate change denial, it's
| actually about the ethics of lithium mining?
| raverbashing wrote:
| Ah yes.
|
| Digging for coal or gas or oil, fracking, etc: just fine
|
| Mining for (significant less amount of) lithium or other
| metals: "oh look they're ruining the environment"
|
| As most discussions go, they're heavily biased towards the
| status quo
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| You have not only the impact of mining but also the problem
| of reverse logistics for correct disposal and recycling of
| those toxic batteries that don't even last long. Batteries
| contaminate soil and water in a way that's much harder to
| control if it start piling up everywhere. And today's world
| can't even solve the disposal of plastic.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| With intelligent charging practices (which often come at
| the expense of stored energy) and temperature control,
| modern lithium cells asymptote to ~20% capacity loss and
| stay there for, well at least since the model S came out,
| still counting. Or that was the case a couple years ago
| when I looked into it. The difference in the battery life
| in a leaf vs a tesla is qualitative not quantitative. The
| motivation to make phone batteries last longer wasn't
| there at first until it provided negative press, now
| intelligent charging is fairly common in phones. Thermal
| management is harder.
| nine_k wrote:
| Lithium batteries are a great source of lithium, and
| bigger of them, like laptop batteries, largely get
| recycled even now, AFAICT. Lithium + iron chemistries in
| particular avoid seriously toxic components.
|
| Both lithium and plastics are far less nasty than, say,
| ash from a coal-burning plant, with its sulfur, mercury,
| and radioactive stuff. Retiring these is a higher
| priority thing, IMO, than improving lithium mining
| cleanliness (though an improvement is always welcome).
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Brine extraction of lithium leaves some waste but largely
| uses solar power to operate and isn't particularly
| invasive. Mining Spodumene is as bad as any other mining,
| and open pit mining is common. There's some other
| techniques that use large amounts of highly concentrated
| acid. But it's a really hard case to make that the oil
| economy is somehow a better environmental story for sure.
| willnonya wrote:
| Both of those can be bad at once you know...
|
| A lithium mine is much more devastating to the environment
| than an oil well or franking. That doesn't mean either of
| these are really good options despite what either side
| wants to pretend.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| This sort of both-sidesing doesn't further the
| conversation at all. Do you really think the person
| you're replying to doesn't know that mining Lithium isn't
| without its environmental costs?
|
| The person you're replying to quite correctly notes that
| mining Lithium is an improvement over extracting coal,
| oil, and gas. The term "green" is so nebulous snd ill-
| defined that it's not worth talking about.
|
| The best thing humanity can do for the earth is clearly
| to remove ourselves from it. Anything less than that is
| compromise. Sure. But sitting here saying "there's no
| such thing as ethical consumption" doesn't really get us
| anywhere.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Precisely; it's not big oil propaganda to understand the
| environmental effects of lithium mining, just as it's not
| lithium propaganda to acknowledge the equivalent
| consequences of the oil industry on the environment.
|
| But if we get to have a way to move at super-human speeds
| (ie > 5 km/h walking and > 30 km/h running), cheaply and
| without environmentally detrimental consequences, that'd
| be great :)
|
| (Fellow cyclists, I know, cycling is an excellent
| solution for single-person small- and mid-range movement.
| I'm thinking here of mass transportation and goods
| transportation, where it'd be hard to use cycle-powered
| lorries across continents.)
| scythe wrote:
| >A lithium mine is much more devastating to the
| environment than an oil well or franking.
|
| This isn't true at all. Lithium is mined in much smaller
| quantities and in fewer places. In some cases (Cornwall,
| e.g.), it can be obtained as a byproduct of geothermal
| energy. It can also be recycled. By contrast, the
| Wikipedia list of environmental disasters has an entire
| _section_ devoted to oil:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_disas
| ter...
| nine_k wrote:
| What makes a lithium mine so bad? Oil wells prone to
| generate lots of saltwater, too.
| 1ris wrote:
| Both can be bad, and both are bad.
|
| But it looks like a lot of people assume they are just as
| bad without any quantitate or qualitative assessment.
|
| Lithium mining is way less bad than oil extraction in
| both dimensions. If that lithium can offset oil
| consumption it looks particular good.
| jl6 wrote:
| No doubt that mining lithium has negative impacts, but
| those negative impacts feel localized in a way that can
| in principle be mitigated and cleaned up, and though bad
| for local communities, it doesn't pose existential risk.
| This is in stark contrast to the fossil fuel cycle which
| distributes pollution globally into the atmosphere, and
| will be tremendously difficult to undo.
| defrost wrote:
| Untouched National Parks don't bounce back to pre mine
| status so that's a Yes to "in principle" but a No to "in
| practice".
|
| _Lithium exploration drilling near Litchfield National
| Park raises sustainability questions_ [1]
|
| > University of Queensland professor of conservation
| science James Watson says that mining associated with
| renewable energy could cover about 50 million square
| kilometres of the Earth's surface by 2050.
|
| > His prediction is startling.
|
| > "About 10 per cent will be in national parks and
| protected areas, another 7 or so per cent will be in
| areas that have been identified as critical biodiversity
| areas to sustain species and stop extinction, and a
| further 15 per cent or so will be in our last remaining
| wilderness on the planet," he said.
|
| I've spent a few decades in mineral exploration, in
| geophysics and in mapping global mineral and energy
| resources.
|
| We have some real issues to sort out going forward with
| respect to resource extraction and the rights of
| indigenous people and wilderness.
|
| [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-13/lithium-found-
| near-li...
| jupp0r wrote:
| What percentage of national parks will be affected by
| climate change? I see your point but if we have two bad
| options and one is absolutely worse than the other,
| making them look equivalent because they have some
| environmental impact is not helpful to protecting as much
| if the environment as possible.
| defrost wrote:
| A surprisingly high percentage in National Parks globally
| (ie. many different jurisdictions) that are also (or
| adjacent to) indigenous lands with various treaties and
| contracts.
|
| eg: The US has one ~$64 billion copper resource (leased
| to Anglo - Australians) in native lands [1] which is an
| as yet unresolved and sizeable can of worms, and that's
| barely the start of the list (although it is the largest
| global pending copper project).
|
| There's a nice GIS directory of such things that we (here
| in W.Australia) compiled a decade ago (along with
| automation to run it forward) that's now a bit paywalled
| [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_Copper
|
| [2] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campai
| gns/met...
| megaman821 wrote:
| These scientific advances in batteries are cool, but I don't take
| them as a specific indicator of what is coming. It is a numbers
| game, if there are 1000 scientific advances maybe 1 or 2 will
| survive the gauntlet and make it into manufacturing in the next
| 10 years.
|
| It seems reasonable that there will be battery options that cost
| 50% as much and others that have 2x greater energy density in the
| near future. That seems great to me. Batteries will be viable and
| economical across most storage needs expect for aviation,
| shipping and seasonal grid storage.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Same. If you follow articles like this you'll be constantly
| wondering what happened to "x".
|
| ("Graphene can do everything except get out of the lab")
| RGamma wrote:
| Specifically for grid storage I'd like to see more attention
| given to gravity batteries [0], the compressed liquid type.
|
| Recently saw a video (in German, [1]) in which there was back-
| of-the-envelope calculation that a gravity battery built by
| hydraulically raising a cylindrical landmass with 1km diameter
| by 500 meters stores about 2TWh (recent yearly gross
| electricity consumption of Germany is 560TWh).
|
| It's such a simple concept! Also, they are looking for
| investors: https://heindl-energy.com/
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnomwGCBNAE
| amalcon wrote:
| Pumped-storage hydro (the cheapest and generally most
| practical gravity battery) is currently responsible for
| almost all grid-scale energy storage worldwide. I don't think
| it's fair to say it's not getting attention.
|
| What's not getting attention is the use of solids for this.
| The main reasons are that you'd like to re-use most of the
| infrastructure of the hydroelectric dam you wanted anyway,
| and that liquids make for simpler engineering in these cases.
| toss1 wrote:
| What is interesting about a quick look at the Heindl Energy
| solution is that it looks like basically pumped hydro.
|
| The difference is that the water is sitting in a large
| cylindrical space underground with a large (minimum 100m /
| 300ft diameter) rock piston sitting on top of the water.
|
| Eliminates the need for mountainous terrain with a high
| lake-like geometry to pump the water up out of the gravity
| well -- they can build this in the flatlands
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| That is an obscenely large cylinder. And a large height to
| raise it!
| acc_297 wrote:
| There are simpler technologies that already exist on this
| principle pumped hydro being the main one this proposal seems
| like overkill to have so much storage in a single location
| RGamma wrote:
| Well of course you can divide up the mass and build several
| smaller installations.
|
| I was merely hinting at the fact that pumped hydro storage
| can be made more compact and flexible by compressing the
| liquid with a piston.
| willnonya wrote:
| While I welcome this advancement it still seems like a solution
| to the wrong solution for another problem.
| SamBam wrote:
| Very unclear what you mean. Large-scale, cheap, safe, and
| environmental energy storage is a huge issue that is nowhere
| near solved yet, so more solutions are absolutely a good thing.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| capacity is but one of many characteristics of a successfully
| battery technology. it's important to consider just about every
| possible factor,
|
| capacity, power density, charge and discharge rate, lifespan /
| shelf life, safety, voltage range, temperature ranges while
| charging, discharging, cycle count.
|
| And, also, the performance of these attributes under various
| temperature profiles.
|
| This list is far from exhaustive, I'm not a battery expert but
| just something I came up with in a few minutes of thought. So,
| gtfo with your capacity claim. Every few months a battery break-
| through article comes out. I've become de-sensitize to this type
| of news.
| simmerup wrote:
| What is your comment actually adding?
| benreesman wrote:
| I'm a layman as concerns batteries, but I'm old enough, just like
| photovoltaics, for the prevailing view to be: this is at the
| asymptote, it's not getting any better.
|
| I'm glad some people decided not to listen to that bollocks.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| For solar panels I agree, there's a hard limit of how much
| energy per area the sun itself gives, and how much efficiency
| you can physically get out of that.
|
| For batteries: biological creatures store more energy more
| densily, yet safely, so there's still headroom.
| ilyt wrote:
| > For batteries: biological creatures store more energy more
| densily, yet safely, so there's still headroom.
|
| Conversion losses are bigger tho
| stickfigure wrote:
| I'm not looking forward to cleaning my house battery's
| litter box.
| TheIronYuppie wrote:
| I think the general thinking is that cost is going to be the
| determining factor for PV. It it gets to be cheaper than
| paper, for ex, you could just put it everywhere.
|
| But there are still lots of wins - we're only in the low 20s
| for efficiency and mostly catching visible light. There's
| also environmental, long life, etc ways to improve as well.
| fps-hero wrote:
| Solar is by far the cheapest form of energy by a
| significant margin. It is already at the point where it
| makes sense to put it everywhere, and have concentrated
| large scale generation.
|
| For solar to win, we need to solve energy storage, or
| perhaps the energy distribution problem. There is no amount
| of solar which will give you power 24 hours in a day in a
| single location.
|
| Energy storage is the best short term solution. If we can
| capture peak solar generation and move that energy to the
| peak demand period, we can have a serious discussion about
| moving away from coal for baseload generation. It won't be
| needed during the day, and the demand periods covered by
| storage.
|
| However, for solar to really win, we need to think bigger
| with our energy distribution networks. Think of a global
| scale distribution network, like an internet for
| electricity.
|
| If you can send an IP packet from your computer across the
| world, why not energy?
|
| With a sufficiently large interconnected global scale
| network of renewable generators, energy storage becomes
| less important. We don't need gas pipelines, we need
| longitudinal and latitudinal HV distribution networks.
| danans wrote:
| > If you can send an IP packet from your computer across
| the world, why not energy?
|
| This has already begun in the form of the new
| transmission line under the North Sea between England and
| Norway, which will be used to store wind power from the
| UK in pumped hydro facilities in Norway. [1]
|
| But sending electricity at grid transmission levels
| across major ocean distances may not pencil out
| economically.
|
| Politics also comes into play. In the US for example, the
| Texas grid won't even attach to the rest of the national
| grid.
|
| 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link
| cesarb wrote:
| > For solar to win, [...] If we can capture peak solar
| generation and move that energy to the peak demand
| period, we can have a serious discussion about moving
| away from coal for baseload generation.
|
| Why is it always solar vs coal? The generation mix
| depends on your network, but AFAIK, the world is already
| moving away from coal towards natural gas; and solar is
| often complemented by wind.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| But afaik, solar panels currently convert only 20% of the
| energy to electricity, can you explain why this is close to
| the theoretically or practically possible maximum?
| benreesman wrote:
| I'm the wrong kind of an engineer to have a cogent thought
| / argument about that.
|
| My remark was more of an anecdote that these things are
| getting better in spite of a great deal of pessimism about
| them over my lifetime.
| [deleted]
| Aardwolf wrote:
| There's a theoretical limit of 55% for unconcentrated, 85%
| for concentrated sunlight. I'm not sure about the exact
| thermodynamical reasons for those numbers.
|
| But claims of "1000x better" can physically never be true,
| unlike for batteries (e.g. antimatter, no matter how
| impractical, has millions times more energy density)
| perlgeek wrote:
| Solar panels still have some dimensions along which they
| could improve, for example:
|
| * efficiency in low-light situations
|
| * efficiency when parts of the panel are covered
|
| * cost
|
| I guess the inverters could also be improved...
| gumboza wrote:
| Time will tell. All new battery technologies solve one problem
| but create two more.
|
| Edit: I'm not necessarily talking about technology problems.
| There are geopolitical and environmental problems too :)
| qwertox wrote:
| https://www.energy-storage.news/basf-takes-sodium-sulfur-bat...
| sylware wrote:
| How do you process them once they run out of reasonably efficient
| cycles?
|
| Reconditioning facilities? wastes? etc?
| Tagbert wrote:
| Considering the main ingredients are sodium and sulfur,
| recycling should not be a major problem. Those are commonly
| used elements and not particularly toxic.
|
| This question is always asked about EV batteries. Their
| recycling is something that is being developed but is still in
| prototype phase. Actual production scale recycling is not
| feasible yet because the number of retired EV batteries is too
| small to be efficiently recycled. That will eventually change
| but since EV batteries are generally lasting for a decade or
| more, it will take several years before we start seeing
| significant numbers needing to be recycled. I would expect that
| the same story would apply to these batteries if they are
| deployed.
| sylware wrote:
| "recycling should not be a major problem", well, this is
| where more details would be more than welcome.
| microjim wrote:
| Would love to hear from domain experts here. Reading the article
| one finds that they only created very small cathodes rather than
| anything close to a 'consumer sized' battery.
|
| (The full text of the paper is available for free at
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202206828)
| scythe wrote:
| I'm not a battery expert, but I have looked into Na-S before.
| While it's a great rhetorical bludgeon in arguments about what
| batteries can do in theory -- we'll never run out of sodium or
| sulfur -- actual costs of Na-S installations are consistently
| much higher than lithium or other battery types. For example,
| this review cites a present system cost of over $400/kWh:
|
| https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/13/3307
|
| A new scientific development can be cool, but it won't directly
| reduce costs, since it's not actually an industrial process. A
| lower operating temperature might simplify construction. But
| all that remains to be seen.
|
| EDIT: if you read the original paper in TFA you will find that
| molybdenum, an extremely rare metal, is key to the cathode,
| though only at 1.2% by weight. Interpretation unclear.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| It's just more science by press release. Wake me up when
| there's a real manufacturing process developed.
| app4soft wrote:
| > _Reading the article one finds that they only created very
| small cathodes rather than anything close to a 'consumer sized'
| battery_
|
| There are few articles on 'consumer sized' _18650_ sodium-ion
| (Na-S, Na-ion) battery (aka NIB):
|
| October 2019: _Developing O3 type layered oxide cathode and its
| application in 18650 commercial type Na-ion batteries_ [0]
|
| May 2022: _First 18650-format Na-ion cells aging investigation:
| A degradation mechanism study_ [1]
|
| August 2022: _Remaining useful life prediction for 18650
| sodium-ion batteries based on incremental capacity analysis_
| [2]
|
| [0]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336562138_Developin...
|
| [1]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359078973_First_186...
|
| [2]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362754837_Remaining...
| Tade0 wrote:
| I wonder how does it stack up against non-flow zinc-bromide
| batteries, which apparently are already being produced and are
| aiming for the stationary storage market:
|
| https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/09/30/gelion-unve...
|
| The 2MWh/yr plant is very small, but reportedly it's a repurposed
| lead-acid facility because the production process is similar
| enough.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| With batteries is that there are way more factors than just
| capacity. You need thermal run way, cold/hot weather perf, heat
| generated, charge time, numb cycles before capacity is 80%,
| weight power ratio, scalability and cost
| thehappypm wrote:
| Some applications are easier than others. Grid storage, for
| example, can be in climate controlled warehouses, do optimal
| charging cycles to maximize longevity, don't care about weight,
| etc.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Sodium-sulfur batteries are already in use for grid storage [0]
| [1]. They're large and they have to be kept hot, so they won't
| work for mobile applications. This article seems to be describing
| one that works at room temperature.
|
| [0] https://www.energy-storage.news/uae-integrates-648mwh-of-
| sod...
|
| [1] https://www.bestmag.co.uk/worlds-largest-sodium-sulphur-
| ess-...
| jojobas wrote:
| Li-S is already 2.5x the energy density of TNT.
|
| Before you say "petrol", petrol is typically not carried in the
| form petrol/oxygen fizz and its energy density is therefore zero.
| foxhill wrote:
| likely because the logistics of handling and utilising an
| energy source that can materialise the entirety of its stored
| energy instantly has some safety concerns.
|
| requiring air is not a limitation, it's a feature.
| jojobas wrote:
| I'm saying I'd rather not be near a 100kW-h Na-S battery.
| Current Li-Po batteries require quite some shielding at tiny
| a fraction of the energy density if you don't want to burn.
| gruturo wrote:
| TNT has actually pretty low energy density - lower than
| chocolate chip cookies if I remember correctly. It's only used
| because of its ability to deliver it all in one go - something
| cookies lack. Energy density alone is a fairly inadequate
| metric to decide how dangerous some material is, and what
| precautions to take handling and transporting it.
| jojobas wrote:
| Just as petrol, cookies have energy density of zero until
| mixed with oxygen. Just like TNT, or more like black powder,
| batteries have all components required to yield energy in one
| enclosure, which is why there are battery explosion videos
| and no cookie explosion videos.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| They don't mention the actual specific energy of the completed
| cells in Wh/kg. Also, "four times of WHAT?" They need to compare
| like-to-like, which would mean comparing to an equivalent Li-S
| cells.
|
| Li-S cells usually have much higher specific energy than regular
| lithium ion. I doubt these cells are better, considering sodium
| is heavier than lithium.
|
| The highest lithium ion cells you can get now are Amperium cells
| at 390Wh/kg, plus the metal anode Licerion cells at over
| 400Wh/kg. That's not counting lithium sulfur which can get to
| 650Wh/kg (but are still stuck in the lab).
| mikeyouse wrote:
| They tested the drawdown at 1V with cells over 1,000 mah/gram
| so >1,000wh/kg if that voltage is their operating voltage.
| deng wrote:
| They say the charge capacity is 1017 mAh/g. That is about four
| times the value of a typical (good!) Li-Ion battery.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Not useful without the cell voltage. Need both to figure out
| the energy storage. Anyone?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Cell degradation was tested at 1V - so conveniently right
| around 1,000wh/kg.
| bjarneh wrote:
| Isn't that quite close to the magic number which makes
| electric planes a viable option? 1 kW = 1 kg; Musk said
| something about that in a podcast I think...
| termain wrote:
| That's specific power, not specific energy. Do you mean 1
| kW*r/kg?
| bjarneh wrote:
| Yes of course, I meant to say 1 kW*h = 1 kg; but I'm not
| certain if I remember correctly now; I could be off by a
| factor of 10 I guess. It was either 1 kg battery weight =
| 1 kW*h, or perhaps he said 10 kW*h had to be contained in
| a 1 kg battery to allow all types of air travel.
|
| I think the 100 kW*h Tesla batteries found in the Model
| S/X weigh around 750 kg; so I guess electric air travel
| is still difficult unless a battery breakthrough happens;
| at least in terms of weight.
| danw1979 wrote:
| ... assuming the cell voltage is the same ?
|
| A quick google suggests Na-S cells at high temperatures are
| ~2.1V nominal (as opposed to 3.2V for LFP), but I lack the
| physics chops to parse the paper in the article to validate
| this. Anyway this sounds like a tiny experimental cell and
| for real world applications you'd want to see the Wh/kg for a
| fully packaged product.
| deng wrote:
| > for real world applications you'd want to see the Wh/kg
| for a fully packaged product
|
| Oh, absolutely, there's still a lot of stuff that could
| prohibit this technology from ever becoming an actual
| product. AFAICS, they also don't say anything about
| dependence an ambient temperature, for instance. It might
| be that this thing disintegrates as soon as it's freezing.
| Or, actually the most likely: that it's simply not possible
| to build this thing at scale with reasonable cost.
| mikeytown2 wrote:
| Let me know when I can buy 30kwh worth of energy storage so I can
| compare it to Lifepo4 costs [1]
|
| [1] $10,500 https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-ll-lithium-batteries-
| kit-48v-...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| LiFePO4 batteries are really magical; mostly made of easy-to-
| find materials, good density, long lifetime, hard to make
| explode.
| kennydude wrote:
| This would be great also if, during damage situations they are
| less harmful than Lithium Ion batteries (which cause very hot,
| self sustaining fires for hours and hours!)
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I would think any dry cell would have this as a problem? If you
| stuff a kWh into a box and get it back out without adding
| anything, there is a kWh in that box, and I think all these
| sorts of reactions proceed faster at higher temperatures, so
| wouldn't runaway always be a possibility?
| ajross wrote:
| This is all FUD, and I wish people would stop repeating it.
| Battery fires in vehicles (which I assume is what you're
| talking about) are _objectively safer than gasoline fires_.
| They just are.
|
| It's true though that they have to be fought differently,
| because they can't be extinguished by flushing the fuel away as
| you can for liquid fires. So the "hours and hours" bit is sorta
| true, I guess. But having to keep people away from a battery
| fire for a while while you hose it down is an annoyance, not a
| safety concern.
|
| In any case the battery under discussion is a molten
| electrolyte thing intended for grid storage, not vehicles.
| ilyt wrote:
| > This is all FUD, and I wish people would stop repeating it.
| Battery fires in vehicles (which I assume is what you're
| talking about) are objectively safer than gasoline fires.
| They just are.
|
| They just happen way more often, petrol tank is smaller
| tucked in usually somewhere in the back of the car, VS
| battery cell where just puncture can start a fire where
| gasoline can "just" leak without catching fire. Althought I
| imagine chance for that grows a lot with old cars, once they
| start to rot from corrosion
| cesarb wrote:
| > petrol tank is smaller tucked in usually somewhere in the
| back of the car
|
| I think most car fires are not from the fuel tank leaking,
| but instead from a short somewhere in its electric system,
| or from a leaking hose spraying flammable liquid (fuel,
| oil, etc) onto a hot surface (like the motor). Compared
| with an ICE vehicle, an EV should have less hoses with
| flammable fluids, but more parts on its electric system.
| ajross wrote:
| > They just happen way more often
|
| I don't think that's true either? Obviously the FUD angle
| means that it Makes Big News when EVs burn. But gasoline
| cars burn all the time.
|
| Look, if there's evidence for battery safety issues then
| let's discuss it. But there isn't. There are millions of
| EVs on the roads now. Can we even name one accident where
| someone was injured by an EV fire? It's just not there.
| This is wrong. What you're repeating is wrong.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Today I learned that a fire that cannot be put out with water
| or by smothering it, and which must be left to burn for hours
| on end, and which produces a variety of gases more toxic than
| those resulting from gasoline combustion, is safer than a
| gasoline fire that burns out in a few minutes.
|
| Mind blown.
| ncann wrote:
| Sorry, I can't resist the urge to repost this classic comment on
| a thread about new battery technology:
|
| Dear battery technology claimant,
|
| Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary
| battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to
| existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner
| from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will
| likely fail, because:
|
| [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale.
|
| [ ] it will be too expensive for users.
|
| [ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles.
|
| [ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels.
|
| [ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures.
|
| [ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable.
|
| [ ] it has too short of a lifetime.
|
| [ ] its charge rate is too slow.
|
| [ ] its materials are too toxic.
|
| [ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode.
|
| [ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care.
|
| [ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then.
|
| [ ] by this time it ships li-ion advances will match it.
|
| [ ] your claims are lies.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I find it tiresome empty snark.
|
| Better batteries are a really big deal. Is every promising
| technology gonna work out? Of course not. But there's valid
| reasons to be interested and excited. I _like_ that these
| stories appear on HN so I can keep a rough understanding of how
| research is progressing. And usually there 's some comments
| here from people who know the field a lot better. But to find
| those gems I have to scroll past a whole crowd of people
| posting this self congratulatory snark.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I have to scroll past a whole crowd of people posting this
| self congratulatory snark.
|
| Has this comment ever been posted more than once in a thread?
|
| edit: and I honestly can't understand what is self-
| congratulatory about a list of issues created by somebody who
| is obviously interested in batteries, and has seen a lot of
| press releases with the same flaws. It gives laymen a
| sensible list to check the newest claim against.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| It's not as bad in this thread, it's more that every single
| thread in this topic area has this sort of snark, if not
| the exact text template, as the number one or two comment.
|
| Sure it's fair to say I should just ignore it. But I find
| it lowers the quality of discussion in a way I want to
| protest, so I'm doing so. It's a zero effort "dunk" posted
| reflexively.
|
| If you'll let me ramble a little bit, part of why I push
| back on this sort of behavior is because of growing up
| around evangelical extremists. A huge part of their
| behavior is using and re-enforcing what I call "thought
| ending cliches." These are one size fits all rhetorical
| quips that function to shut down conversation. "Well it's
| all part of God's mysterious plan" being the most basic
| famous one. Climate change? "It goes in cycles." You get
| the idea.
|
| This kind of empty reflexive contrarian snark does the
| exact same thing, so no, I don't see it in a positive
| light. It's not just a joke, it's a joke intended to shame
| people into stopping discussion.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| From a young age I've combed the shelves at public libraries
| and found handbooks on battery technology.
|
| Often 1/3 of the book is devoted to ordinary batteries and the
| other 2/3 are devoted to "reserve batteries" which are able to
| deliver a high power density for a short time to power a
| missile or something like that. There was a huge amount of
| research on those and I think it's easier to make a battery
| work if it doesn't have to last very long.
|
| NiMH batteries seemed to come out of nowhere. I remember Sony
| licensing the technology for "InfoLithium" batteries that
| eventually took over the world.
|
| The market for batteries is bigger than it ever was. Grid scale
| batteries relax many constraints: molten salt batteries might
| be practical there. The South Africans thought this kind of
| battery might be relevant for cars in the late 1970's and
| 1980's
|
| https://www.afrik21.africa/en/south-africa-the-zebra-salt-ba...
|
| and it might be again with electric cars legitmized and if oil
| is out of reach.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >NiMH batteries seemed to come out of nowhere.
|
| My initial thought when I saw your post was "weren't these
| just a relatively contemporaneous improvement on NiCad
| batteries?"
|
| Checked Wikipedia and nope:
|
| NiCad - Invented in 1899 and commercialized in 1910.
|
| NiMH - Invented in 1967 and commercialized in 1989.
|
| I had no idea there was such a long gap between the two.
| acdha wrote:
| I wonder if there was some kind of economic inflection
| point -- it felt like that in my memory, too, where it felt
| like NiCad was advertised more as new thing in the 80s
| before getting replaced with NiMH. I wonder how much that
| perception was steered by what was common in the car
| battery space since that was probably the most known
| rechargeable battery for a long time.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| I thought of it as well, with the same result: this one looks
| like it could actually work for a change...?
| ksec wrote:
| Nothing wrong with reposting it. As a matter of fact I think
| this should be posted every time there is a new battery
| announcement so we can all do the tick boxes.
|
| [ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures. [ ]
| it is too likely to catch fire or explode. [ ] it is
| impractical to manufacture at scale.
|
| These are the only three I see as problematic or unknown. Which
| is not that bad.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| True ... but we need new order or two of battery performance
| improvements, so the breakthrough must come from somewhere.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I have a very simple criterion: Do they have a production
| process designed for this new technology? That's the final step
| to commercialization and is often the barrier that prevents new
| chemistries from entering the market.
| cstross wrote:
| The key word that's almost submerged in the article is _molten_.
|
| Like previous sodium-sulphur batteries this one relies on a
| molten salt electrolyte, meaning you won't see it in your phone
| or laptop any time soon!
|
| However, as it's being developed with the idea of grid-scale
| smoothing/backup, that's much less of a problem. (The square-cube
| law means that as you increase the volume of your molten salt
| cell, the surface area grows more slowly -- and thermal losses
| scale with surface area, so really big cells are cheaper to
| maintain at operating temperature.)
| koliber wrote:
| That also jumped out at me when I read it. However, later on
| they state that this reaction works at room temperature:
|
| > Using a simple pyrolysis process and carbon-based electrodes
| to improve the reactivity of sulphur and the reversibility of
| reactions between sulphur and sodium, the researchers' battery
| has shaken off its formerly sluggish reputation, exhibiting
| super-high capacity and ultra-long life at room temperature.
|
| This is confusing. Can someone make some sense of this?
| red_trumpet wrote:
| The title of their article[1] is "Atomically Dispersed Dual-
| Site Cathode with a Record High Sulfur Mass Loading for High-
| Performance Room-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur Batteries".
|
| [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.20220682
| 8?u...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Just to add, yes, that paper is about solid state
| batteries.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > exhibiting super-high capacity and ultra-long life at room
| temperature.
|
| Maybe this is just bad writing? The battery (at operating
| temp) has high capacity, and (at room temp) can be stored for
| a long time? The wikipedia page indicates that it is normal
| to store charged molten salt batteries at room temp when not
| being used.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery
| jacoblambda wrote:
| I think it might literally mean "operates at room
| temperature" as in 25-35 degrees C. Not really sure how it
| works but there seems to be a distinction between high,
| intermediate, and room temperature for the Na-S battery's
| operating conditions.
|
| Quote from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21
| 663831.2022.2... 1.1. History of Na-S
| batteries Research on Na-S batteries
| originated in the 1960s, with the first research focused on
| High-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur (HT-Na/S) batteries, which
| operate around 300-350 degC. A molten Na anode (melting
| point=98 degC), a molten sulfur cathode (melting point =
| 118 degC) and ceramic b'-Al2O3 as solid electrolyte are
| assembled into the HT-Na/S batteries [11]. HT-Na/S
| batteries avoid the dendrite problem and have high
| electrical conductivity. However, it also has the defects
| of high working temperature, high risk, low energy density
| and high operation cost. And then, the Intermediate-
| Temperature Sodium-Sulfur (IMT-Na/S) batteries were
| innovated in the 1970s and operate between 120-300 degC.
| The IMT-Na/S batteries also eliminated the dendrite
| problem, but the electronic conductivity and the
| utilization of sulfur also decreased. Researchers have been
| intensively investigating Room-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur
| (RT-Na/S) batteries, which operate around 25 degC-35 degC.
| RT-Na/S batteries can completely convert S8 to Na2S, so
| they have a high theoretical energy density (1274 Wh kg-1)
| Valgrim wrote:
| Maybe they found a way to mix it into an eutectic mixture?
| The article doesnt say much on the specific chemistry of the
| liquid salt. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutectic_system
| uoaei wrote:
| That is not and never was the point -- sodium is in the same
| column as lithium on the periodic table, but it is
| significantly heavier than that, so mobile applications (cars,
| phones) are out of scope. Sodium is promising for _stationary_
| , community- or grid-level storage.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| There are many good reasons to expect sodium batteries to
| beat li-ion batteries in specific energy. Yes, a sodium
| charge carrier is ~3.2 times heavier than a lithium ion, and
| yes, it holds a bit less charge, but none of this has to be
| relevant because in a normal li-ion battery less than 1% of
| the total mass is active charge carriers.
|
| If you went by the simple properties of charge carriers
| alone, you'd expect lead-acid batteries to be at least 15
| times worse than li-ion ones. However, the best lead-acid
| batteries are only ~8 times worse than the best li-ion
| batteries. Because even though the charge carriers are so
| much worse at doing their job, the chemistry is otherwise
| much more simple and easy to work with that it lets you pack
| a lot more charge carrier and lot less support infrastructure
| into the same battery.
|
| Sodium is similar, in that if you have a viable electrolyte,
| you can expect to utilize a lot more than 1% of the mass of
| your battery for usable charge carriers. This is why it's
| absolutely possible for molten salt batteries to have
| specific energies much higher than the best lithium-ion ones.
| As far back as 2014 there was a lab-scale prototype that beat
| every li-ion battery then in existence. The big downside of
| course is the molten part -- these are stationary batteries
| not due to low specific energy, but the fact that they have
| to be heated above ~110C to operate, and it is much more
| economical to make such batteries as large as possible. And
| in that segment, the chase is not for the highest specific
| energy but the lowest cost per Wh.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| The work describes a room temperature battery that uses an
| electrolyte of Na (sodium) in a propylene carbonate liquid
| carrier with electrodes made of graphene flakes with Mo and S
| embedded in the graphene framework. I don't know what the
| author of the article posted was trying to say when referring
| to molton Na-S, since it is not part of the battery described
| in the research, nor part of the manufacturing process.
| Probably the author did a search on Na-S for background, and
| not understanding how this differed, stuck it in.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Nope, the PR was poorly written (maybe the Department is
| experimenting with chatGPT ?).
|
| Surprisingly the publication is freely available, and yes it's
| all room temp:
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202206828
| passwordoops wrote:
| My supervisor's wife was working at a pharma company back in
| the 2000s. Her job was to reproduce promising publications
| related to any conditions they were involved in. The
| reproducibility rate was something like 25%, which is higher
| than some other estimates I've seen looking across many
| fields, but still....
|
| Incentives matter and right now they're the wrong ones
| Someone wrote:
| The paper's title is _"Atomically Dispersed Dual-Site Cathode
| with a Record High Sulfur Mass Loading for High-Performance
| Room-Temperature Sodium-Sulfur Batteries"_ (https://onlinelibra
| ry.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202206828?u...), so I guess you
| misread that.
| tremon wrote:
| _you won 't see it in your phone or laptop any time soon_
|
| I know it's (probably) a compound and doesn't have the same
| properties as the individual constituents, but still I wouldn't
| feel entirely comfortable carrying around sodium and sulphur in
| my pocket all day. Maybe I'll let other people prove its safety
| over a few years first.
| cantaloupe wrote:
| Is there any particular reason? Seems pretty naive to make
| any assumptions about the properties based on its elemental
| composition. Lithium is incredibly reactive and toxic in its
| pure form but you surely carry that around. Do you ever
| consume table salt, a compound of reactive sodium and toxic
| chlorine?
| bunabhucan wrote:
| The Wikipedia article mentions two types, molten and room
| temperature, each with their own pros and cons.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery
|
| The paper mentions making the battery at 300c (oven
| temperature) but the text talks about "room temperature" or
| "RT":
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202206828
|
| "...thermally treated at 300 degC for 12 h. The Mo mass loading
| of S@MoS2-Mo1/SGF was [?]1.2 wt.%, measured by ICP-OES. The
| synthesis procedure of S@MoS2/SGF was the same as
| S@MoS2-Mo1/SGF but the thermal treatment was extended to 24 h.
| To prepare the S@SGF, pure SGF was used to replace Mo1/SGF.
| S@Mo1/SGF was prepared by pyrolyzing the mixture of Mo1/SGF and
| S at 155 degC for 12 h."
|
| The only mentions of higher temperatures are for
| thermogravimetric analysis where they heat it to 800c and
| measure the amount of S as it varies with temperature.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The paper, that red_trumpet posted down on the replies is about
| solid state NaS batteries.
| cpfohl wrote:
| I (incorrectly it seems) assumed that "molten" was just part of
| the manufacturing process. This take makes more sense.
| bluelightning2k wrote:
| Very important detail. Thanks for highlighting.
|
| Not only does this limit practicality for phones, cars, but it
| limits practicality _at all_. Some of the larger utility scale
| solar-collector designs ended up failing because of the
| challenges of maintaining elements that involve molten salt.
| deng wrote:
| No, these are room-temperature NaS batteries. They use some
| special electrolyte, but I have no idea how this really works.
| Their main drawback so far was longevity, but this battery has
| a capacity fade of 0.05% per cycle, which is on par at least
| with a poor Li-Ion battery. LiFePo4 is still superior in that
| regard, but the much higher capacity and hopefully lower cost
| (if they can be manufactured efficiently) might make up for
| that, hard to tell.
| analog31 wrote:
| A somewhat shorter lifespan might be a decent trade if the
| materials are much more recyclable and if mining is produces
| less pollution.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| also if the batteries are cheap enough they can be
| considered "partially rechargeable" and swapped out when
| the capacity fades too much
| analog31 wrote:
| I suppose partially worn out batteries can also find new
| uses, such as stationary power reserves, where they're
| not being cycled a lot.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| Is it 0.05% of the remaining capacity, or of the initial
| capacity?
| ksec wrote:
| > but this battery has a capacity fade of 0.05% per cycle,
| which is on par at least with a poor Li-Ion battery.
|
| 20% lost at 400 cycles. This isn't so bad _if_ it really
| offers 4x the capacity. In terms of usage it will last 1600
| cycles comparatively speaking. Which is still far better than
| Li-Ion.
| deng wrote:
| No, Li-Ion batteries can be twice as good:
|
| "In 2003 it was reported the typical range of capacity loss
| in lithium-ion batteries after 500 charging and discharging
| cycles varied from 12.4% to 24.1%, giving an average
| capacity loss per cycle range of 0.025-0.048% per cycle."
|
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_loss)
|
| And that was twenty years ago, things probably have
| improved. I think you have a wrong impression what is meant
| with "a battery lasts X cycles". That does not mean that it
| will be at zero capacity after 'X' cycles, but usually that
| it is down to ~70% of the initial capacity.
|
| EDIT: Sorry, I missed the "comparatively speaking", so you
| mean when including the 4x capacity. You are right, of
| course.
| [deleted]
| abdulmuhaimin wrote:
| The faster battery life deterioration might even be
| desirable for those manufacturers with planned obsolescence
| in mind, especially phone manufacturers
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Can they be recycled to get back close to 100% capacity?
| splitstud wrote:
| dachryn wrote:
| My LifePo4 battery has a 6000 cycle guarantee at 60%
| capacity.
|
| So its not even close yet
| Retric wrote:
| The question is more how many kWh can you store and
| extract over a lifetime at a given cost rather than how
| many cycles can it take.
|
| If the 5999th charge is only holding appropriately 60% of
| a LifePo4 battery you don't get 6,000 cycles * full
| battery capacity.
| deng wrote:
| > So its not even close yet
|
| Yes, if you compare just capacity fade, that's true. But
| the longevity of LiFePo4 comes with a lower charge
| density than Li-Ion, about 170 mAh/g. This NaS battery
| currently has 1017 mAh/g, so almost a factor of 6. If the
| capacity is higher, you don't have to cycle as often, but
| of course, mileage depends on the use case.
| cogman10 wrote:
| That lower capacity comes at a cost cut and a huge
| materials advantage. LFPs are made of highly available
| materials. (Lithium, iron and phosphate).
|
| The higher capacity NMC batteries are constrained on
| nickel production.
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