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First anode-free sodium solid-state battery

pme.uchicago.edu

21–30 of 135 posts

Re: First anode-free sodium solid-state battery

#21

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 - Graphen…

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.

Re: First anode-free sodium solid-state battery

#22

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.

I agree it’s a little overstated, but regardless, Sodium and Chromium are much simpler to use.

Re: First anode-free sodium solid-state battery

#24
post #5
post #3

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.

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...

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.

Re: First anode-free sodium solid-state battery

#26
post #23

Doesn't tell me anything about Energy Density, Volume, or Recharge Cycle.

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.

Re: First anode-free sodium solid-state battery

#27

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 - Graphen…

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.

Re: First anode-free sodium solid-state battery

#28
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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 d…

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?

Re: First anode-free sodium solid-state battery

#29

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 - Graphen…

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.

Re: First anode-free sodium solid-state battery

#30
post #23

Doesn't tell me anything about Energy Density, Volume, or Recharge Cycle.

"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...

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