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Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

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Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#51

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44
MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a fatter phone. It actually might be easier for me to hold. I've never seen the appeal of phones so thin I could shave with them.

> never seen the appeal of phones so thin I could shave with them For people who wear slimmer-fitting clothing, this matters. Also, it’s more about the weight: you want a phone light enough that holding it up isn’t tedious.

I suppose. Then again, so long as it's not so heavy as to cause pain, I think there would be a least some market for such devices. I thought the Steam Deck would be prohibitively heavy to use for it's weight, but the ergonomics made up for much of that.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#52

Post by dtx1 »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #38
hackernewds wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so cynical

I mean, look at what was done to lighting. There are some original Edison bulbs that still work, yet you'd be lucky to get a year out of a modern incandescent. Same thing happened to LED bulbs.

> There are some original Edison bulbs that still work, yet you'd be lucky to get a year out of a modern incandescent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY

> Same thing happened to LED bulbs.

Because LED Bulbs cook your LEDs and are stupid design. Get a permanent LED fixture with decent passive cooling and they will last for decades. Adapting LEDs into the same Plug as Incandescent lighting just does not work.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#53

Post by rapsey »

analognoise wrote: post #10
dtx1 wrote: post #8

50 Thousand Cycles would make replacing batteries unnecessary for almost all usecases. I would love such a battery in an electric bike. Max Range would be quite limited compared to a Lithium Version but with 10x discharge capacity and functionally unlimited life you could make a beast of a commuter e-bike. 50000 Cycles would realistically mean you can charge the bike every day for a hundred years

The first generation will work like that. Then they will introduce various defects into the manufacturing process to decrease the lifespan (and they'll say it's cost) and the batteries will last 10 years max. Maybe 15 if you're lucky.

The market for cost effective grid batteries is gigantic. There is no need to self sabotage.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#54

Post by londons_explore »

garbageman wrote: post #40
londons_explore wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheap as dirt There are lots of things left to make grid battery storage cheap. As well as the cells needing to be engineered to be cheaper, there are lots of changes to the battery packs that can be made, together with changes to inverters. For batteries, I'd like to see research into less consistent manufacturing and higher failure rates. Current packs the entire pack is unusable if just one cell fails in a way t…

While it would be neat to build batteries that handle manufacturing defects akin to a CPU with 4 cores but 3 useable, I suspect the additional complexity, wiring, and circuitry is limiting. Batteries today are almost (or actually?) a commodity. Detecting and simply replacing the entire battery is probably cheaper and easier at grid scale.

The wiring and complexity isn't very much - you simply need a contactor that can 'short' the offending set of cells. It only needs to close once, so can simply be made from a spring and meltable material. And you need ~100 of these per 400 volt battery.

Beyond that, all the complexity is in software. Software needs to monitor cell voltages and currents to detect a self-heating cell. Software then needs to stop balancing that cell up (ie. let it discharge). At the moment the cell voltage hits zero, software needs to close the 'short' across the cell, permanently taking it out of the circuit.

This design might occasionally prevent charging the entire battery for a few minutes during this process. Specifically, when a cell is midway through being taken out of circuit, it can only be discharged, and would be dangerous to recharge.

But a few minutes of downtime per year seems acceptable to me.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#55

Post by addaon »

dtx1 wrote: post #49
addaon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can build such a bike today with LTO cells, which are commonly rated at 5,000 - 25,000 cycles (depending on manufacturer) to 80% of nameplate capacity. You'll compromise on range, of course; but in the worst-case corner (extremely low temperature outside, high current draw rate) the comparison to at least LFP is pretty favorable, and you're within a factor of 2x or 3x of NMC throughout the envelope.

Honestly after a quick google search I'm not convinced LTO Cells are applicable for that use case. Best I found on a quick search is 80wh/kg and at a low voltage and good enough but not great discharge capacity. Even in the electrical bicycle range that's just not enough to be practical, let alone competitive. LFP at it's peak gets you there but it's also not a great experience. The Battery needs to be too large to g…

80 Wh/kg beats the 70 Wh/kg of the cells discussed in the article, which was the benchmark for your proposal. Voltage doesn't really matter at all for this; you just end up with a few more cells in series (though it's admittedly awkward if you're targeting ~56 V max as the top of SELV where most single-chip BMS ICs top out at 18s). And even though most common LTOs are only rated for 10C, they're rated to do that below 0°C, in which domain they absolutely crush the ratings of LFP cells -- for LFP, you end up sizing for temperature unless you're looking at summer riding only. Admittedly you're not going to match 40 C LFP and NMC pouch cells with a cylindrical cell, and I'm not aware of anyone currently making LTO pouch cells; but I do think it seems unlikely that the sodium cells that are the subject of this article bring any really new capabilities to the domain of ebikes.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#56

Post by rini17 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #4
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it isn't as high-capacity, a longer-lasting and safer battery over a thinner smartphone isn't a _bad_ trade-off, specially considering chips and screens get more efficient. This might have more market than stationary batteries.

Are they safer? Sodium is also very highly reactive. Otherwise agreed, I'm very happy with form factor of 5-10 year old phones.

Since na-ion cells are available on aliexpress, youtubers already did puncture tests, and indeed they did not catch fire.

Seems like sodium is better "hidden" in the cathode/anode so it won't react witth the air so quickly as lithium when battery innards are exposed.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#57

Post by rangerelf »

idontwantthis wrote: post #35
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that: > Natron says its batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, a level of immediate charge/discharge capability that makes the batteries a prime contender for the ups and downs of backup power storage. Also helping in that use case is an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles. So you take up more space, but the storage system is better in every other way (agility, conflict min…

> Natron says its batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, a level of immediate charge/discharge capability that makes the batteries a prime contender for the ups and downs of backup power storage. Also helping in that use case is an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles. From everything I've read about existing Lithuum battery storage, this is already their strongpoint. Is it helpful t…

Absolutely.

Instead of stopping to charge my car for half an hour (up to 80%), I can stop for 5 minutes?

Sign me up.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#59

Post by asddubs »

dtx1 wrote: post #52
MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, look at what was done to lighting. There are some original Edison bulbs that still work, yet you'd be lucky to get a year out of a modern incandescent. Same thing happened to LED bulbs.

> There are some original Edison bulbs that still work, yet you'd be lucky to get a year out of a modern incandescent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY > Same thing happened to LED bulbs. Because LED Bulbs cook your LEDs and are stupid design. Get a permanent LED fixture with decent passive cooling and they will last for decades. Adapting LEDs into the same Plug as Incandescent lighting just does not work.

I've actually found that LED bulbs have only gotten more and more reliable over time. I used to have to replace them regularly but I haven't had one fail in several years now. And permanent LED fixtures are the stupid design. Who wants to do electrical work every time your light fails because of a power surge/lightning strike/capacitor going bad/whatever?

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#60

Post by craftkiller »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #51
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never seen the appeal of phones so thin I could shave with them For people who wear slimmer-fitting clothing, this matters. Also, it’s more about the weight: you want a phone light enough that holding it up isn’t tedious.

I suppose. Then again, so long as it's not so heavy as to cause pain, I think there would be a least some market for such devices. I thought the Steam Deck would be prohibitively heavy to use for it's weight, but the ergonomics made up for much of that.

If I use the steam deck for more than a couple of hours then I feel it in my wrists the next day. I still love the steam deck but it could go on a diet.

(There are lighter alternatives, but I bought the steam deck specifically to financially support Valve's Linux gaming efforts)

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