[HN Gopher] First anode-free sodium solid-state battery
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First anode-free sodium solid-state battery
Author : givinguflac
Score : 224 points
Date : 2024-07-06 16:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pme.uchicago.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (pme.uchicago.edu)
| jonplackett wrote:
| Hoping this is a genuine breakthrough, but expecting the first
| comment to point out some important thing this battery can't do
| in the real world...
| vikramkr wrote:
| It's a publication from a research group on a new approach
| they're working on. The more interesting question if there are
| any aspects of this that could make it unexpectedly easier to
| translate to the real world lol. The abstract ends with "This
| cell architecture serves as a future direction for other
| battery chemistries to enable low-cost, high-energy-density and
| fast-charging batteries" - it's important fundamental research
| and exploration.
|
| At some point universities should really rethink how they do PR
| around research - at the least try and tamp down on headlines
| that read like something out of some grifter startup instead of
| a research lab
| popol12 wrote:
| Na4MnCr(PO4)3
|
| Chromium is 5 times more abundant than Lithium in earth crust
| (0.01% vs 0.002%). Better, but not that much ?
|
| "Regular" sodium-ion batteries with prussian blue has, it seems,
| the great advantage of not using any scarce elements. It would be
| nice to have a comparison between this solid state chemistry and
| the regular one.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Not sure it is a 1:1 equivalent, but this site[0] claims global
| chromium production is at 41 million metric tons while lithium
| is 180,000 metric tons. So, the supply chain already exists.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/598320/mine-
| production-o...
| Teknomancer wrote:
| Chromium mining is crucial for the steel production industry
| because chromium is a key ingredient in the production of
| stainless steel. We've been hunting and mining it for a LONG
| time now. Stainless is important to so many preexisting
| industries, such as new construction, automotive, aerospace,
| and household appliances. Consequently, there have been
| shortages in the availability and mining of chromium and this
| has directly impacted the production capacity and quality of
| stainless steel in the recent market. Seems solid-state
| battery production will be in competition with these
| industries and I would hedge a bet that Stainless Prices will
| go high in the coming decades as a reflection of the pinch on
| chromium.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Are there any alternative steel alloys that aren't used now
| for cost reasons that we'd see if there was a spike in
| chromium prices?
| silisili wrote:
| AFAIK there's no stainless steel without chromium. There
| are alternatives, like galvanizing or powdercoating.
|
| I think if the price of chromium spiked enough, you'd
| just see more things move on to different materials. More
| aluminum, titanium, brass, bronze, etc. There are a lot
| of things made of stainless that don't necessarily have
| to be, simply because it's cheap and good enough.
| mastax wrote:
| During WWII Germany had limited access to chromium and
| cobalt so they developed alternative metallurgy for their
| engines etc. I know they nickel plated their cylinder
| bores. I'm sure there's more detail available somewhere.
| kubectl_h wrote:
| Can you recover chromium from stainless steel?
| WJW wrote:
| Yes, through electrochemical means. It's not super energy
| efficient though, it'd be much better to not put it into
| steel in the first place if you want to make batteries
| out of it.
| creshal wrote:
| We're already recycling pretty much all the steel we can,
| so yes, but it's already factored into the global steel
| supply chain.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The difference in their geochemistry is substantial so even if
| chromium isn't technically that much more abundant, it's
| significantly easier to mine.
|
| The Gibbs free energy of formation for chromium oxides and
| chromite is much more negative than for lithium-bearing
| minerals so Cr compounds are thermodynamically favored to
| precipitate out of melts and solutions, forming minerals with
| high concentrations that then get pushed up by other processes.
| Li+, with its lone valence electron, just doesn't form strong
| bonds or highly stable mineral phases in comparison. On top of
| that the diffusion coefficients for Cr species in magmas and
| rocks are generally orders of magnitude lower than for Li. Cr
| gets locked into crystal structures early and stays put, while
| Li keeps migrating and diffusing in the form of water soluble
| minerals. There's also a whole biogeochemical cycle for Cr
| involving microbes that can concentrate it in sediments.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Chromium is also being looked at for resistive thermal
| storage, due to the stability properties you mentioned. Doped
| chromia (Cr2O3) bricks act as both thermal storage elements
| and resistive heating elements up to 1800 C.
|
| https://electrifiedthermal.com/
|
| https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/130800
| brightball wrote:
| This is why I've been interested in the Graphene Aluminum
| batteries from GMG for so long. They are producing graphene
| in bulk without having to mine it. Aluminum is already
| extremely abundant as well.
|
| I'm very optimistic because these solve so many battery
| issues at the same time, heat, rapid charge, sourcing.
| bjconlan wrote:
| Oh wow this is great technology. (Also surprised that it's
| driven by the UQ/rio-tinto. Hopefully GMG will learn from
| the failures of Tritium on the business side of things (as
| they are from similar stock))
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > prussian blue
|
| I recognized this as a paint color but didn't know this part.
| Fascinating substance, this was a very interesting Wikipedia
| rabbit hole:
|
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_blue
| westurner wrote:
| What are the processes for recovering Chromium (Cr) when
| recycling batteries after a few hundred cycles?
|
| Is it Trivalent, Hexavalent, or another form of Chromium?
|
| Chromium > Precautions:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium#Precautions
| waynecochran wrote:
| Lithium has atomic number 3 and, along with Hydrogen and
| Helium, was present (at a much lower level) in the early
| universe. The Earth's crust contains about 20-70 parts per
| million (ppm) of lithium. It may be tedious to extract, but it
| is not like we will ever run out.
| jfengel wrote:
| I don't know much about electricity but surely an anode is
| necessary for electrons to flow?
|
| Sayeth Wikipedia, "Instead, it creates a metal anode the first
| time it is charged."
|
| Ok. I'm still not entirely clear on it but it makes some kinda
| sense.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Yea, it also confused me - "anode-free" suggests there is no
| anode, and to best of my understanding a battery needs two
| electrodes so there will be a circuit for the current to flow.
| The full Wikipedia quote is: "An anode-free battery (AFB) is
| one that is _manufactured without_ an anode. Instead, it
| creates a metal anode the first time it is charged. "
|
| It's sort of like "serverless" ;)
| cogman10 wrote:
| I think the way to understand it is that there isn't a
| special layer in the battery foil for making the anode. It's
| all chemically the same.
|
| I mean, with the server-less analogy, it is sort of like the
| fact that you don't manage the creation and destruction of
| the VM, someone (something) is though.
| philistine wrote:
| Serverless is a buzzword for the executive class.
|
| _You're telling me I could run my code AND fire all the
| employees managing my servers!_
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| The other thing is how is that a benefit?
|
| Why should I be excited that "it creates its metal anode the
| first time it is charged"?
|
| I mean this question in ELI5-fashion not in a disparaging one.
| ok_dad wrote:
| cheaper to manufacture with less parts, since anodes are
| usually an expensive part made from expensive materials and
| are hard to manufacture
| timerol wrote:
| The anode is the part of the battery that ions flow to when
| charging the battery. To save weight as much as possible, you
| can imagine a case where the anode is only the ions that moved
| to the anode. This is what "anode-free" means. When the battery
| has charge, there will be some sodium metal as the anode. When
| the battery is fully discharged, there will be no anode,
| because the sodium has moved into the cathode.
| alex_young wrote:
| Lithium extraction is also environmentally damaging, whether from
| the ... brine extraction that pumps massive amounts of water to
| the surface to dry.
|
| That's a bit of a stretch. Pumping water to the surface of a dry
| lakebed far from most life and letting it evaporate is pretty low
| on the environmental impact scale from mining. I wonder how that
| compares to sodium extraction.
| s0rce wrote:
| I thought the issue with evaporative brine projects was mainly
| the water use in generally water scarce areas. There are direct
| extraction technologies that are better. Sodium you can just
| let the ocean evaporate in ponds, although this destroys
| wetlands (see for example a bunch of these around the SF Bay,
| some being restored to their native state).
| alex_young wrote:
| With lithium they are pumping deep water up to the surface,
| not adding any. The water holds the lithium and is part of a
| massive ancient aquifer.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Lithium is also extracted via ocean water evaporated in
| ponds. You do need a bed with a high concentrated amount of
| lithium near the ocean, those are not uncommon.
| bredren wrote:
| Right, I recall a question of native populations with limited
| access to water and then water shows up suddenly but for
| extracting the lithium.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Hmm, i assume desalination could get the sodium out and also
| give us fresh water, maybe another incentive for
| desalination.
| g15jv2dp wrote:
| There are several issues with brine extraction, including
| intensive water usage, and atmospheric pollution (the
| extraction releases e.g. sulphur dioxide).
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| I agree it's a little overstated, but regardless, Sodium and
| Chromium are much simpler to use.
| adrian_mrd wrote:
| This is a good overview on some of the environmental impacts:
| 'Environmental impact of direct lithium extraction from brines'
| (2023) in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, PDF:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-022-00387-5.pdf
| turblety wrote:
| Great, yet another new battery revelation that will never come to
| market. Why is this? Why do we constantly hear of these amazing,
| technical advances, but yet we never see any of it come to
| market?
|
| - Lithium-Sulfur Batteries
|
| - Solid-State Batteries
|
| - Sodium-Ion Batteries
|
| - Aluminum-Ion Batteries
|
| - Silicon Anode Batteries
|
| - Magnesium-Ion Batteries
|
| - Lithium-Air Batteries
|
| - Zinc-Air Batteries
|
| - Flow Batteries
|
| - Graphene-Based Batteries
| Tagbert wrote:
| Some discoveries founder in the stage of figure out how to go
| from a science experiment to a process to manufacture actual
| batteries. Sometimes there are technical or economic issues
| that prevent commercialization.
|
| Most of the research on this has only started in the last 10
| years or so and it does take time to work out the kinks.
|
| Even within the common Lithium-ion batteries, there have been
| constant improvements but it's easy to miss the changes over
| time.
|
| "Eternally five years away? No, batteries are improving under
| your nose" https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-
| five-years...
| pfdietz wrote:
| Did you know Tesla Megapacks have declined in price by 44%
| over the past 14 months? Sometimes the changes become very
| visible.
| philistine wrote:
| Seriously for real?
|
| Why did the price of the cars not drop accordingly?
| Curious.
| manquer wrote:
| They have ? Tesla has made aggressive price cuts in the
| last year or so .
|
| Yes, partly it was to simulate demand, but they can only
| afford to do so because of their costs going down.
|
| Tesla has not been spending on a lot of new models
| recently , but they have been spending heavily on making
| them cheaper and better.
|
| Rivian, ford GM and every other non Chinese car
| manufacturer has been loosing money per car expect Tesla
| for a reason
| erikaww wrote:
| Supply and demand
| styfle wrote:
| [delayed]
| cogman10 wrote:
| Umm, a good number of those have hit the market.
|
| Graphene anodes are pretty bog standard at this point in LiPo
| batteries.
|
| Magnesium doping has also found its way into high density NMC
| batteries.
|
| Sodium-ion batteries are currently being manufactured by CATL
| and in the ramping up phase.
|
| You aren't seeing them because the chemistry of these batteries
| is usually only called "lithium ion" or "Sodium Ion" the
| various other chemicals are thrown into a soup of special sauce
| to raise battery density, cycle life, charge speed, etc.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| One reason seems to be that lithium-ion batteries are nowhere
| near as expensive and difficult to manufacture as advocates of
| the other battery technologies seem to want us to believe.
| Basically, the other batteries don't come to market because
| there _is_ no market.
|
| And as the other poster suggests, quite a bit of R&D does make
| it into existing devices in one form or another. All of these
| technologies are worth exploring, but the notion that replacing
| present lithium battery tech is super urgent is not actually
| correct.
| hulitu wrote:
| Propaganda ? Someone has an agenda. /s
|
| TBH, there are a lot of "news" with conditional: might, could
| etc. The sad thing is that they generate (spam) discussions on
| HN.
|
| But hey, after all, maybe that's their purpose.
| popol12 wrote:
| Sodium-Ion is actually starting to ship. It's possible to buy
| 18650 cells. Not exactly competitive yet, but at least it's not
| vaporware.
| vikramkr wrote:
| because the need for them has spiked resulting in an
| unprecendented level of R&D going into them in recent years?
| And R&D into tons of different approaches is a good thing,
| actually? And because it's frankly a young field of research?
| This is a publication from academia - of course they're trying
| new things! That's the entire point! That's their job!
|
| The incessant press releases suck but PR people gonna PR.
| pfdietz wrote:
| One thing to note is that "coming to market" means being able
| to compete in the market.
|
| And this is tough. There are only so many market niches, and if
| some competing technologies turn out to be better your product
| has no place.
|
| This is the tragedy of engineering: most technologies, even
| technologies that "work", end up failing, because in any niche
| there can be only one winner. I'm sure if you've worked on new
| technologies you've experienced this, perhaps on every
| technology you've ever worked on.
| sadhorse wrote:
| Because the market is made up of selfish human beings. First
| they don't care for long term environmental consequences. If
| that is not enough, then they use fossil because their enemies
| are using, and not using it means getting destroyed today.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| What this person said isn't even true, what are you talking
| about?
| froggy wrote:
| EOS Energy (zinc-bromide grid-scale batteries), just christened
| their first automated manufacturing line and have entered mass
| production.
| pfdietz wrote:
| They've been around forever, originally with zinc-air
| batteries. That must have failed somehow.
| ksec wrote:
| Doesn't tell me anything about Energy Density, Volume, or
| Recharge Cycle.
| catapart wrote:
| From the article: it was tested only to 100 cycles.
|
| So this is experimental and a product version won't be
| available for a year or (likely) longer. And as products
| naturally niche into longevity, weight, capacity, and other
| categories, those metrics will become relevant at that point.
| Until then, it's just experimental results with metrics
| relevant to previous experimental results.
| GlibMonkeyDeath wrote:
| "demonstrates a new sodium battery architecture with stable
| cycling for several hundred cycles" So nowhere near enough for
| grid storage (depending on their definition of "stable".)
|
| The plot shows ~400 Whr/kg and ~800 Whr/L densities. For grid
| storage that is fine.
|
| The paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01569-9 is
| unfortunately behind a paywall.
|
| We will see. Battery technologies live or die on whether the
| nasty, complicated surface reactions are truly reversible over
| discharge cycles at the sizes needed to be practical...
| gpm wrote:
| 400 Whr/kg is competing for the highest energy density
| applications that can run on rechargeable batteries. Things
| that fly. Cars. Not grid storage.
|
| I mean if it was otherwise suitable for grid storage it's not
| a downside obviously, but at those energy densities it can be
| inferior in terms of cost and/or cycle life and still be
| commercially viable in other significant markets.
|
| Not to mention this is research, it doesn't have to directly
| result in a commercially viable product.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| These monthly breakthrough announcements are getting annoying.
| Seems that "several hundred cycles" was good enough to publish
| this one.
| tills13 wrote:
| Eh, we start with 100 cycles and then someone has an idea and
| we go to 1000 and so on. Interesting times we live in.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Even at 100 cycles it's likely cheaper for some
| applications - i.e. helicopters.
| Genbox wrote:
| Research deals with theory. Not everything in research is
| immediately practical. Lots of engineering, tweaking, and
| testing goes into market-ready products. This announcement is
| an achievement for science, not a consumer-ready product.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Research deals with theory.
|
| There is research that deals only with theory, but empirical
| research deals with practice, even if not always pragmatics.
| christkv wrote:
| My main interest with these kind of batteries is little to no
| fire hazard
| BelmonduS wrote:
| Can you check how sodium reacts with water or humidity?
| mperham wrote:
| Strawman. No one is talking about pure sodium.
| Salgat wrote:
| This is why we are very careful when we use table salt.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| There are already varieties of lithium batteries with little
| (LFP) to no (LTO) fire hazard. LFP is cheap, too, which is a
| nice bonus.
| dtx1 wrote:
| > with stable cycling for several hundred cycles. So an order of
| Magnitude less than useful batteries.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Why file a patent in UC San Diego
| alephnerd wrote:
| Grayson Deysher - the author of the paper and the experiment -
| is a PhD candidate at UCSD (go tritons!)
| gpm wrote:
| Preprint of paper here: https://chemrxiv.org/engage/api-
| gateway/chemrxiv/assets/orp/...
| xyst wrote:
| One will hope this becomes commercially successful and the dirty
| process of creating and building lithium batteries goes away
| completely. Hope we become less dependent on China and other
| countries with shady labor practices (ie, child labor, minimal to
| no safety regulations).
| kobieps wrote:
| Yeah I've seen too many of these overhyped academic
| announcements that never make it commercially because they
| overlooked some small but critical aspect of manufacturing.
| Production is HARD
|
| Disclaimer: I really hope these batteries make it.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| This is shocking news.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Can't wait for this to never go further than this single
| published paper.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Yeah don't have your hopes up, but Shirley Meng is well known
| battery researcher, it's not complete vaporware.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The thing is that researchers just have to come up with stuff
| that works, not stuff that is viable.
| jti107 wrote:
| pretty cool...but when it comes to batteries what matters is
| scale and total cost. it doesnt matter if the elements are
| cheaper, are you introducing a product that is significantly
| better or cheaper that the current status quo (see the rise of
| LFP)?
|
| can you use existing factories and manufacturing techniques or do
| you need to invent or build those. we've started hearing about
| solid state batteries about 15 years ago and we still dont have
| any at a big enough scale. if solid state batteries do takeoff it
| will probably takeoff first in electric aviation and supercars
| which can hide the cost due to a more expensive products and the
| need for higher density
| ec109685 wrote:
| Lithium has actually dropped in price by 80% over the last two
| years, so this part of the article is (currently) wrong:
|
| " The lithium commonly used for batteries isn't that common. It
| makes up about 20 parts per million of the Earth's crust,
| compared to sodium, which makes up 20,000 parts per million.
|
| This scarcity, combined with the surge in demand for the lithium-
| ion batteries for laptops, phones and EVs, have sent prices
| skyrocketing, putting the needed batteries further out of reach."
|
| Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
|
| https://www.bradley.com/insights/publications/2024/02/lithiu...
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Yes, interesting article and battery design, but the university
| PR folks certainly overplayed the "problems" with lithium. Not
| unusual.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| it's a mere correction, it's still higher than pre-covid
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Yes, and conflate "totals" with proven reserves while failing
| to mention that people aren't really actively looking for more
| reserve as aggressively. But this is a PR piece for the
| University for which the standard problem is to magnify both
| the problems it avoid as well as the impact it produces.
|
| But at its core, an anode free battery has a lot of desirable
| properties which make this engineer feat notable. Perhaps the
| most important is that the materials are readily available in a
| number of countries which could source their own raw materials
| to produce batteries. They also do not fail exothermically[sp?]
| when cell integrity is breached, that makes them a better
| battery for cars than the current Lithium ones.
|
| So the next bridge to cross (and one so many battery
| breakthroughs fall down on) is what is the cost to produce
| batteries at scale. If, as we read yesterday they can get them
| down to $1/kWh then you'll be seeing a whole lot of these.
| zoigdev2 wrote:
| And what about environmental issues? Do you know how much
| damage lithium mining causes?
| Covzire wrote:
| Does it permanently condemn the land as too toxic be used for
| anything? Or can that all be cleaned up?
| bilsbie wrote:
| It seems more happens in these anodes than in the electrolyte.
| How's that possible?
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Good the abundance of sodium and its stable state is going to
| give us a huge potential for power storage. I have so many
| potentially spicy pillows in my house I'll be glad to have it
| swapped for sodium any day.
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