In a statement, Northvolt says its validated cell is more safe, cost-effective, and sustainable than conventional nickel, manganese and cobalt (NMC) or iron phosphate (LFP) chemistries and is produced with minerals such as iron and sodium that are abundant on global markets.
It is based on a hard carbon anode and a Prussian White-based cathode, and is free from lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite. Leveraging a breakthrough in battery design and manufacturing, Northvolt plans to be the first to industrialize Prussian White-based batteries and bring them to commercial markets.
Reports across the web also say the technology enables the supply chain to become ecologically more sustainable, cheaper, abd less dependent on China.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
This isn’t some futuristic technology. Na-ion was originally researched at the same time as Li-ion but didn’t show enough commercial promise in the 1990s.
Sodium-ion batteries have already been deployed in a few locations. The energy density is only 160 Wh/kg (compared to 100-220 for Li-ion) so you won’t see it in personal devices, but for applications where space isn’t at a premium, this technology is already in market.
I believe you mean mass, not space if you cite the energy density per kg.
Technically correct (best kind) but in reality, to get the same capacity, you’ll need more mass, which uses more space as well.
Well, it is a big difference when we are talking about applications like air or space travel where space might be a lot easier to increase than the capacity to carry extra mass.
I did, thanks. It was early and my brain focused on “density” and forgot the word before it.
I’d guess the energy density per litre is also worse, but those aren’t the numbers I used!
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I swear we hear about a new battery technology every week.
There’s this new company called Duracell that’s making these AA batteries which seem promising too
I heard about these sodium-ion batteries a few years ago. I don’t really care much about these until they are actually in the market.
Happens when there is a lot of public interest in some sector…
But in this case it actually isn’t “new technology”. The idea is as old as lithium-ion batteries and equally solid. But back then (the 1990s) people saw greater potential in the more expensive (material-wise) lithium-ion batteries because for mobile electronics starting to become big energy density was more important than prize/ressources, so that’s were the money to develop and improve mass production went.
Now that there is interest for a product on a scale were required ressources are the more important factor than seize and weight (grid level energy storage for example) it’s only natural that those existing concepts are revisited everywhere as those concepts are usually already developed to “ripe for production” levels and all that is missing is the investments to build production up large scale… cost and efficiency improvements then happening naturally included. I mean… just look up how lithium-ion battery performance improved in the last decades without any actual technical improvements, just by optimizing processes with the experience from scaled up production.
Battery capacity has almost tripled in the last decade.
Probably in 10 years, because it’s a car battery, and it takes time to pass all regulations. Notable absense of comparing it to Lithium battery, so definitely not targeted at smartphones. It will get installed into your nearest wind farm first.
I mean, a lot of decentralized battery storage solutions are probably even more important right now, simply because we still require exactly that for our grids.
For now the manufacturers themselves see their market mainly in african and middle-eastern countries. So maybe not even the nearest wind farm depending on where you live.
Notable absense of comparing it to Lithium battery
I spotted that also.
In terms of BESS, my experience is that the bigger issue has been designing cubicles that don’t leak or catch fire.
This isn’t some technology being researched, it’s an actual product in development. I’d certainly take their numbers with a pinch of salt but the premise is solid.
I’d like to relay this comment from hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36834046
It seems there’s news of a battery breakthrough every week. I’ve learned to temper expectations, because so many “breakthroughs” turn out to be dead ends. Because it’s not enough for a battery to be incredibly light, or made of abundant materials, or last for ten thousand cycles. It needs to be good at many things and at least okay at most things.
E.g.—
• How much capacity per dollar?
• How much capacity per kilogram?
• How much capacity per litre?
• How quickly can it be charged?
• How quickly can it be discharged?
• How much energy is lost between charging and discharging?
• How predisposed is it to catching fire?
• How available are the materials needed to manufacture it?
• How available are the tools/skills required to manufacture it?
• How resilient is it to mechanical stress, e.g. vibration?
• How much does performance degrade per cycle?
• How much does performance degrade when stored at a high state of charge?
• How much does performance degrade when stored at a low state of charge?
• How much does performance drop at high temperatures?
• How much does performance drop at low temperatures?
• How well can it be recycled at end-of-life?
A sufficiently bad answer for any one of these could utterly exclude it from contention as an EV battery. A battery which scores well on everything except mechanical resilience is a non-starter, for example. Though it might be great for stationary storage. I’m only a layperson and this list is what I came up with just a few minutes of layperson thought. I’m sure someone with more familiarity with battery technology could double the length of this list. But the point is, when you daydream about some hypothetical future battery tech, you need to appreciate just how well today’s lithium chemistries score in so many areas
Isn’t Prussian white super rare too?
Time to put my chemistry to use for something other than covering up the ugly spot in the wallpaper!
Prussian white isn’t really a thing a thing you dig up, it’s a thing you make in a lab or a factory. The nice thing is that you can make it from basic components and basically at room temperatures It’s just sodium, iron, carbon, nitrogen and manganese. Those are incredibly common elements and easy to find anywhere on earth.
Synthesis probably involves some solvents and acids, but nothing overly dangerous. You can make this stuff in a very basic lab with moderately basic precursors.
(although industrial size synthesis is very different from what people publish papers on, so take all this with a grain of salt)
What do you mean, I cannot just buy a 1000 gallon beaker and pour stuff in?! My childhood was a lie.
A surprisingly large number of “chemical reactors” are literally that, but with metal instead of glass beakers.
Yea, but they’re WAY more complex than a giant beaker and if it’s an exothermic reaction, they basically always take extra, cooling and all sorts of control mechanisms, too. By saying, “but they basically are” is very specifically ignoring every single detail about the entire point.
It IS NOT like a giant beaker precisely because it needs all of the extra stuff on top of a giant container.
It’s a natrium-iron cyanide salt. Probably poisonous, not any harder to produce than any other industrial chemical, as long as you automate the process.
Iron, carbon, and nitrogen? It’s been produced for hundreds of years.
Isn’t that one of the colors Bob Ross was always using?
Maybe it’s not easy to produce, but Na2Fe[Fe(CN)6] doesn’t seem like it has any rare raw materials (but I’m a layman and just googled it).
What’s the use case for these batteries? Comments below indicate that they have a lower energy density and use a cyanide compound, which means that they won’t be for personal devices (form factor and safety!). Is the intent for grid scale storage from renewables? Would safety still be an issue (is there any way the cyanide could be evolved off as a gas due to over heating, over charging, etc?)
yes. grid scale storage is always what I heard from these where inexpensive beats density because volume difference is of little concern. In addition it keeps it from using up lithium that is necessary for other uses.
