[HN Gopher] Sodium batteries offer an alternative to tricky lithium
___________________________________________________________________
Sodium batteries offer an alternative to tricky lithium
Author : edward
Score : 83 points
Date : 2023-10-26 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| tromp wrote:
| Previous discussion on CATL's Sodium-Ion battery:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750955
| Gasp0de wrote:
| https://archive.ph/SHBJ7
| NikkiA wrote:
| TIL that Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, and Australia are all part of
| 'China'
| megaman821 wrote:
| Those countries have lithium mines, but do they have
| substantial lithium refineries? I believe they just ship all
| their lithium to China.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ya, mostly in China because they do it so cheaply, and aren't
| really concerned with the environmental consequences of
| cheaper refining processes. The market demands lower prices
| before anything else.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What are you talking about? Nothing in the article even
| remotely suggests that.
|
| What it _does_ say is that most of the world 's _refining_ of
| lithium takes place in China. It 's right there in the
| subtitle: "Lithium is relatively scarce and mostly refined in
| China."
| scythe wrote:
| This is the short version of _The Economist_ 's piece on sodium
| batteries. For headline stories there is often a short and a long
| version. The long version is linked in the article or you can
| find it here:
|
| https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/10/25/...
|
| https://archive.ph/Tw4Gj
| dctoedt wrote:
| It'll be interesting to see whether there might be any kind of
| _late_ -mover advantage for those who sat out lithium and begin
| pursuing sodium-based batteries now.
| recursive wrote:
| Sodium is not competitive with lithium for energy density, as
| measured in joules/gram.
|
| Sodium is good for stationary deployments. It's not good when
| weight matters.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I wonder how well it suits home storage? Not being violently
| flammable would be a bonus for homeowners
| bogeholm wrote:
| Sodium + water is, unfortunately, violently flammable.
|
| Add water to elemental sodium, and you get heat, hydrogen
| gas and sodium hydroxide.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm not sure how it's held in the proposed batteries, but
| isn't pure Sodium violently explosive when in contact with
| water?
| djbusby wrote:
| Batteries aren't pure sodium. Pure sodium bonded with
| something (eg: chlorine) is less explosive.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Any concentration of energy (gasoline, batteries,
| compressed air, etc) is always a potential bomb if it is
| released too quickly.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Acquiring sodium wrecks the landscape to the exact same extent as
| does lithium extraction. The only differences between them are 1)
| we already wrecked all the territory for sodium, so fallacious
| sunk-cost thinking kicks in, and 2) there is not (yet) a
| dedicated astroturf campaign funded by oil companies against
| sodium.
| chris_va wrote:
| Saltwater
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Much easier to get sodium than lithium, concentration is much
| higher and there is much more sodium than lithium in/on the
| earth's crust.
|
| Salt for batteries might also be a tougher target for any
| campaigns against it.
| biomcgary wrote:
| We just need to combine desalination for drinking water with
| sodium extraction for batteries. Solves _some_ of the
| ecological problems from doing each in isolation.
| fooker wrote:
| This requires a massive amount of electricity, unrealistic
| until maybe fusion is commonplace.
| margalabargala wrote:
| What would be the additional massive amount of energy usage
| to capture the sodium output of the many, many already
| existing and economical desalination plants?
| hattmall wrote:
| breaking apart the salt into sodium would be very energy
| intensive I think.
| floxy wrote:
| Does anyone know how that compares to whatever refining,
| etc. they have to do to turn lithium ore into material
| suitable for use in batteries?
| jes5199 wrote:
| solar is getting cheaper so fast that we'll be able to do
| desalination in a few years
| fooker wrote:
| You have to split the salt molecule too.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The energy cost of desalinization is a solved problem,
| thanks to very efficient modern membranes and solar.
| fooker wrote:
| There is an additional step here - electrolysis to
| separate sodium and chlorine.
|
| The energy cost of that is not a solved problem.
| floxy wrote:
| What do you with the chlorine? PVC? Pool cleaners? Bleach?
| Rocket propellant? Others? What opportunities might arise
| with an abundance of cheap chlorine? Probably want to stay
| away from chlorofluorocarbons.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's a good question. It is already quite cheap, so I'm
| not sure it won't be waste.
|
| I also don't know what chlorine waste looks like. Maybe
| react it with iron to do sea-seeding?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Absolute nonsense.
|
| Our oceans are full of Sodium in very high concentrations.
| Sodium Choloride, aka. NaCl, aka kitchen salt. About 11 grams
| per kg in ocean water. And about 90 grams in the average human
| body. Lots of salt deposits in former salt lakes, mineral
| deposits, etc. Neither scarce nor hard to harvest.
|
| You would literally die without sodium in your body. Very
| common mineral and pretty easy to get to.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And there are mass quantities of sodium underground, in salt
| and anhydrite layers.
| jsight wrote:
| It doesn't seem like lithium is actually scarce. Does this help
| with the more tricky issues developing at the moment? For
| example, graphite?
| paiute wrote:
| This is a decent nerd video that talks about lithium mining. I
| enjoyed it. Skip to 13 min for the answer .
| https://www.youtube.com/live/inq_ypJeiZk?si=o34J3qJVNoDJ2FBy
| bee_rider wrote:
| I did, but I think the answer was kind of jargony or, at
| least, I didn't get it. It sounds like she was saying that it
| exists all over the place in small amounts because it doesn't
| like to be a solid?
|
| I think it is an interesting lecture if you are interested in
| a sort of geographical answer of where they might look for
| it, but at least after skipping around a bit and watching
| some stretches at double speed, she hasn't gotten to the sort
| of economic answer of, like, do there exist sources that can
| turned into batteries easily (since we are mostly programmers
| who mostly care about whether or not the batteries will exist
| to power the devices we want to program).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Afaik,
|
| > _do there exist sources that can turned into batteries
| easily_
|
| Yes, but only a few. There aren't many _high-concentration_
| lithium deposits. (There are many more low-concentration)
|
| Which is essentially the mining industry in a nutshell:
| concentration of raw mined feedstock -> economically
| efficient processing -> finished product (bought by
| consumers who don't care where it came from, and so has a
| single market price)
|
| See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_carbonate#Prod
| uction
| opencl wrote:
| Lithium isn't scarce relative to current demand levels but if
| the automotive industry wants to transition to 100% EVs that's
| an _enormous_ increase in demand.
| jandrese wrote:
| Isn't that just how markets work? They are sized to the
| demand today, so if you were to increase demand by 10x
| overnight of course they would be distorted. If however
| demand increases slowly over time then the markets react
| normally--suppliers increase production, new suppliers enter
| the market--and the price remains fairly stable.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| That's assuming availability at quantity of base resources.
|
| Which has generally been a fair assumption: as demand
| increases and price increases, exploration is incentivized
| and new sources are found, and capital is invested to
| increase production at existing / new sources.
|
| But... there are also other ways it can go. Copper? Cobalt?
| Uranium-circa-1940s? Sometimes, more just isn't found.
| jandrese wrote:
| In cases where supply is externally constrained the
| markets still work. The price of that component starts to
| go up so people search for alternatives. This is already
| happening in the battery market (as per TFA) and is
| natural.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It's not always possible though.
|
| Look at titanium. The US had to buy it (through shell
| companies) from the Soviets for their spy planes, because
| there were no alternatives.
| lazide wrote:
| There is no shortage of titanium ore. Titanium is the 9th
| most abundant element in the earths crust, at roughly
| .5%.
|
| There was at the time a severe shortage of usable
| titanium refined metal. Refining Titanium is much more
| difficult than aluminum.
|
| The soviets had over invested in the ability to produce
| it, so it was more economic to get it from them than try
| to produce the capacity here.
| bsder wrote:
| Actually, doesn't titanium precisely demonstrate the
| original point.
|
| Ukraine now barely ranks as a producer while China, South
| Africa, and Australia are the primary sources.
|
| When demand pops up, different deposits start becoming
| viable.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Lithium is plentiful enough for grid storage, but it's so at a
| higher price than it has today. It's also cheap enough for
| mobile batteries, but not negligible, and cost is the most
| important metric for grid storage.
|
| Thus, lithium looks like one of the fundamental bottlenecks for
| grid storage. It can kinda work on high-cost small-size pilot
| projects, but we probably won't be able to use it for real.
|
| Sodium on the other hand has all of the same desirable
| chemistry properties, but scales much better. And iron has all
| the cost benefits, but undesirable chemical properties. (And
| there are, of course, people working on C-H vs. C-OH bonds that
| are completely out of the box.)
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Flow batteries always seemed like the ideal solution for
| grid-scale storage.
|
| You decouple the transformation (charge/discharge) from the
| capacity (liquid volume), with the goal of making the latter
| "a standard pressure, watertight tank."
|
| But I believe last time they came up here, people said the
| charge/discharge still needed some work.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, it looks like that to me too. Also, they make the
| lifetime of the active element independent from the one of
| the reagents, and recycling and maintenance very standard.
| It's just not really related to the chemistry.
|
| Also, long-term storage will very likely use some different
| chemistry from short-term. High-temperature batteries have
| some very interesting trade-offs that I have no idea how
| will pan-out in practice. Things are mostly not settled on
| that area, it looks like a very interesting thing to work
| on.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I wonder if we (as a species) will ever get to reverse
| nuclear fission.
|
| I.e. putting energy into nuclear reactors so that we can
| produce U-235. Although I guess technically breeder
| reactors, although like-to-like is less fun fantasy than
| solar -> fissile.
| uoaei wrote:
| Grid storage doesn't need to consider weight at all. We can
| use heavy storage methods if they're cheap enough with enough
| capacity. There's some rather exotic designs for energy
| storage that don't use any materials that we could feasibly
| run out of.
| jsight wrote:
| I get that, but it is all relative. I'm not seeing any
| indication that lithium is the most difficult aspect of
| battery production. It seems like a short term problem
| compared to graphite, nickel, and (seemingly) cobalt.
|
| It seems like time is the bottleneck in basically all cases
| rather than overall capacity as well.
| jtriangle wrote:
| Nothing is really scarce, but, costs associated with accessing
| it effectively make it 'scarce'. In that regard, sodium is far
| more abundant.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| My understanding is for batteries lithium is the less tricky
| one because it doesn't change size during redox reactions.
| Sodium does and that damages the anode or cathode (can't
| remember which, don't care).
|
| Yeah and the low production of lithium is due minimal demand
| historically. It's not like other metals with a large historic
| demand. Like copper.
| tooltalk wrote:
| Well, graphite is not all that scarce either. The problem is
| that China has almost complete dominance in the anode material
| production (ie, graphite) with 90+% market share in EV battery
| supply-chain.
| somethoughts wrote:
| I'd be curious to know if any US companies are working on such
| technology? Perhaps 3M?
|
| [Update] Watched a CNBC video[1] and found one in Silicon Valley.
|
| https://natron.energy/news-and-events/
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQE56ksVBB4
| malchow wrote:
| Yes, Spencer Gore is working on it:
|
| https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-electric-a-start...
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| They don't mention it in this article but the big positive going
| for Sodium batteries is the cost, they are half the price of li-
| ion per KWH and about a third the price of Li-Pho. There are
| already quite cheap Sodium battery based cars out from BYD and
| while they are the lower range end of things (200 miles) they are
| also considerably cheaper.
|
| So I think Sodium will find its way into the lower range EVs and
| home/grid storage since its so much cheaper. But I don't imagine
| we will want less power in phones or laptops as sodium is bigger
| and heavier.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Why do you say they don't mention the cost? I'm sorry but like
| that's what the ENTIRE article is about, the cost savings of
| sodium batteries over lithium.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| The only mention they have of cost is
|
| "Since the chemical components are cheap, a scaled-up
| industry should be able to produce batteries that cost less
| than their lithium counterparts."
|
| They do not mention its a half to a third the price of the
| two prevailing technologies and they they have weaselled it
| with "should". It does cost less already, you have been able
| to buy sodium ion batteries on aliexpress for months and the
| cars are already out from BYD and many more are scheduled
| later this year and into next.
|
| The article is mostly about the geopolitics of the materials.
|
| So I stand by they don't mention it, I read that article and
| I felt this was the key missing context as to why Sodium
| batteries are going to matter.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| They are also one band lower on the periodic table. That's a
| lot of mass, and the ionization metrics are worse.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Lithium is only a small fraction of the mass of Li-ion
| batteries. Also, Li does not change oxidation state in Li-ion
| batteries, so its energy of ionization doesn't affect the
| voltage of the cell.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Won't it at least affect the redox electrode potential?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I would love a lower end rickshaw/golfcart tier small ev. It
| would be great for trips and errands around town you could do
| on lower speed roads. I don't need a 5000lb behemoth.
| phreeza wrote:
| Something like this? https://urbanarrow.com/business-
| bikes/cargo/
| nine_k wrote:
| This is a two-wheeler without any protection from weather.
| But it's about the right weight class.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| For protection from the elements there are things like
| the Veemo[1], I guess compared to the tiny EVs you do get
| a little exercise too (but you have even less collision
| protection, not much different from riding a normal
| bike).
|
| 1: https://veemo.ca/
| dendrite9 wrote:
| Bikes are a place where weight matters more than in a small
| car, at least for the user. Although I guess some ebikes
| have motors that don't require pedaling.
| silisili wrote:
| Something like this? I just saw this somewhere this week,
| maybe even here. Dropping links below...
|
| https://www.squadmobility.com/
|
| https://electrek.co/2022/12/06/squad-solar-electric-city-
| car...
| nixass wrote:
| Citroen Ami
|
| https://www.citroen.co.uk/ami
| rich_sasha wrote:
| ...and seating a family of 4. Top speed 30, maybe 40 mph,
| range of 20, I'm in the market.
|
| I own a cargo bike, and it's great mostly, alas not when
| the weather is inclement.
| foobarian wrote:
| My problem is, if EV is not going to work for 100% of my use
| cases, I need a second car. But if I need a second car then
| it doesn't make sense to overthink the EV, any will do. What
| would be really awesome is if I could have one car and swap
| the power train easily, but that's just fantasy talk.
| flukus wrote:
| Hiring a car for specific trips is probably much better,
| depending on the % of those use cases. That goes for other
| factors like towing capacity too.
|
| Cars are already very expensive for something with such a
| low utilisation rate.
| te wrote:
| I have one, and they are as great as you expect. Used 2013
| Nissan Leaf's can be had for $5k or less.
| elihu wrote:
| There's the Arcimoto FUV. I'd consider it a step up from
| golfcart/rickshaw as it's meant to go at highway speeds, but
| it's much smaller/lighter than a regular car.
| bill38 wrote:
| Sodium is tricky too. It reacts violently to water. Even humidity
| in the air can make it explode.
| rini17 wrote:
| Lithium is only a bit better, in practice it requires exactly
| the same precautions.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The lithium in Li-ion batteries is never in metallic form. I
| believe the sodium batteries being discussed here also leave
| the sodium in ionic form.
| rini17 wrote:
| There are plenty of li-ion battery dismantling vids, with
| lithium clearly in metallic form.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| As would be evidenced by kitchen salt exploding in your face
| when you use it. Oh wait. Not a thing.
| Sembiance wrote:
| Sodium and kitchen salt are not the same thing.
| https://youtu.be/CArZeDTwVh4?si=tdVHOPO-8QZhxrkS
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Sodium would be the Na part of Na Cl.
| bc_programming wrote:
| Right, but water not being readily burnt is not evidence
| that hydrogen is inert.
| Kalium wrote:
| Yes. You are correct.
|
| Thankfully kitchen sodium is in compound form, and thus
| not likely to react violently with water. In this
| context, the properties of pure metallic sodium are
| relevant because it would need to be handled in
| manufacturing. Kitchen salt is more commonly mined or
| extracted, requiring minimal to no handling of pure
| metallic sodium.
|
| I hope this helps clarify any misunderstandings.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| But the Na has lost its electron to the Cl, so not the
| same thing.
| Chabsff wrote:
| And both of them contain a bunch of protons, yet neither,
| nor their combination, behave like loose protons (aka
| Hydrogen).
| fooker wrote:
| Did you skip middle school chemistry classes?
|
| Common salt is NaCl, not metallic sodium.
|
| The later (needed for batteries) explodes in contact with
| water.
| lstodd wrote:
| It's hydrogen that explodes, not sodium. Sodium just forms
| NaOH on contact with water. Did _you_ skip them classes?
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Did _you_ skip them classes?
|
| That's crossing the line into hostile pedantry--there's
| no reason to get nitpicky over _which step_ in the
| reaction chain is most-to-blame for someone losing their
| eyebrows.
|
| Fooker is still correct that (A) the metallic-vs-salt
| difference is very important and (B) bringing those
| metals together with water can cause explosions.
| nvy wrote:
| The reaction is exothermic and also produces H2 gas. If
| the metal ignites it can also ignite the H2 gas which
| gets spicy in a hurry, so it's reasonable for someone to
| interpret that as the metal exploding.
| kaashif wrote:
| Sodium definitely does explode on contact with water,
| although not as violently as potassium.
|
| Here's one of the search results for "sodium explosion":
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16771
|
| Unless your comment is about how an explosion needs a
| pressure wave and sodium is just really burning hydrogen
| or something.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The article in Nature is about a paper by Thunderf00t
| (Phil Mason). He published the result in Nature Chemistry
| and also made a video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlAYnFF_s8 (the video
| has a nice balance, it's technical but not too
| technical).
| bluGill wrote:
| That isn't sodium, that is already exploded sodium.
| nvy wrote:
| Don't be flippant if you're out of your intellectual depth.
|
| You are factually incorrect and should educate yourself on
| basic high school chemistry before you embarrass yourself
| further.
| vardump wrote:
| My understanding is that lithium ion batteries don't use
| metallic lithium, but salts, like lithium carbonate or lithium
| hydroxide.
|
| Are sodium ion batteries somehow different? If so, how can they
| keep metallic sodium stable at all?
| margalabargala wrote:
| Is there anywhere where I, a consumer, can buy sodium ion
| batteries online right now at any price?
| interroboink wrote:
| Sure, look on aliexpress.com, for instance. [1]
|
| I'll hold back from giving you a let-me-google-that-for-you
| link (:
|
| [1] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805680782897.html
| margalabargala wrote:
| This is new! The only ones available when I last looked a few
| months ago were mislabeled li-ion batteries.
|
| This is great, though. Thank you.
|
| EDIT: my understanding was that one of the major benefits of
| sodium ion batteries was their ability to discharge down to
| 0V. These appear to all have low voltage cutoff marks.
|
| EDIT EDIT: some available do list 0V discharge, though
| nothing looks like it will ship until 2024.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Sodium batteries looks great on the outside, but amount of charge
| discharge cycles is roughly half what lithium batteries can do.
| So what you will save on cost difference between sodium and
| lithium will get eaten up by shorter life of sodium battery.
| vardump wrote:
| A really bold claim, any sources?
|
| Please remember there are a _lot_ of different sodium-ion
| chemistries.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| That's fine though. Thanks to time value of money, if it costs
| half as much but has to be replaced in half the time it's
| actually quite profitable. (Assuming, of course, the labor cost
| is low.)
|
| If they can be recycled like lithium, even better.
| thfuran wrote:
| As long as you want to watch the world burn.
| jtriangle wrote:
| Understand that, they're about half the cost of lithium
| currently, but they don't have nearly the same scale benefit as
| lithium does. It's likely that cost could half again if they
| achieved the same scale.
|
| And recall that, early lithium batteries had a fraction of the
| longevity that current designs have, so, it's likely that
| sodium batteries have plenty of room for improvement in that
| regard as well.
|
| In my mind, the likely application is grid-scale storage where
| density doesn't matter as much but upfront cost does. Not
| really so much for renewables, but more so that you can store
| your unused base load during offpeak hours for later use.
| mips_r4300i wrote:
| That's true, which makes them perfect for Powerwall-type backup
| power, where weight is not a concern and the number of cycles
| will be very low.
|
| The other way to deal with low cycle count is to keep the cells
| only half-charged and minimize the excursions from that. A
| large pack that goes from 40 to 60 percent daily will last eons
| compared to one cycled from 90 to 10 percent.
|
| From what I understand, the degradation of the cell is not
| linear with the discharge excursion. So you may have
| exponentially better battery life the narrower of charge band
| you keep it in. If anyone has more detailed information let me
| know, I'd like to see better numbers.
| zizee wrote:
| Having lower total number of cycles, and a tighter operating
| band has a huge impact on the lifetime cost of operation.
|
| How much cheaper are these types of batteries expected to be?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _but amount of charge discharge cycles is roughly half what
| lithium batteries can do_
|
| This is not true if you are talking about lithium ion
| batteries. It may be true for some chemistries if you are
| talking about lithium iron phosphate.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery#Comparison
| gumby wrote:
| > Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of sodium batteries is their
| late start.
|
| Sodium batteries have a long history. I know the US Navy was
| using them for batteries on their submarines back in the 70s, and
| they surely started long before then. Lead-acid batteries emit H2
| which would be a disaster in a sub.
|
| On problem I remember about them was that they run very hot, and
| are liable to catch fire. Perhaps that has been solved in the
| last five decades!
| MisterTea wrote:
| You may be thinking of molten salt batteries
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery
| datameta wrote:
| Apparently the non-rechargeable version is the primary power
| source of AAM, SAM, and cruise missiles. The interesting
| thing is before use the salt is solid and inert (without
| degradation in a long-term stockpile) but once triggered with
| a pyrotechnic primer they reach an operating temperature of
| 400-550 for the single use lifetime.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Those were likely sodium-sulfur batteries. They employ
| diffusion of sodium ions through a hot ionic conductor, beta-
| alumina.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery
| mattmaroon wrote:
| If news outlets took all of the money they have spent paying
| writers to tell us that a new battery technology will be here any
| day now, they probably could have funded one that actually will
| be here any day now.
| oldbbsnickname wrote:
| A failure to appreciate both are alkali metals.
| swayvil wrote:
| FYI : Lithium and Sodium are both substances that explode when
| you drop them in water.
|
| I wonder what the connection is.
| nologic01 wrote:
| Something that will complicate technological solutions going
| forward is the need to have no negative environmental impacts
| across the entire lifecycle of any new contraptions, under a
| scenario where they are produced, used and recycled at planetary
| scale and for... a long time.
|
| These types of constraints did not exist in the earlier
| technological innovation eras but are sort-of self-evident now:
| There is not much point to do embark on expensive retooling of
| the entire energy system if it simply results in a sort of
| "footprint-shift", reduce GHG emissions but increase
| environmental impacts elsewhere.
|
| The article (and links therein) don't provide an immediate view
| on these aspects of different approaches to battery construction.
| Maybe it is too early in the cycle. But I think these issues will
| have to be explored thoroughly for any solution that is deemed
| technically and economically viable.
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