from the they-all-go-boom-when-exposed-to-water dept.
From Phys.org:
After two years of research, a French team, mostly including researchers from the CNRS and CEA within the RS2E network on electrochemical energy storage have just designed an alternative technology to Li-ion for application in specific sectors. The researchers have developed the first battery using sodium ions in the usual "18650" format, an industry standard. The main advantage of the prototype is that it relies on sodium, an element far more abundant and less costly than lithium. The batteries have displayed performance levels comparable to their lithium counterparts, and this new technology is already attracting industrial interest. It could be used to store renewable energies in the future.
The idea for using sodium in batteries dates back to the 1980s. At the time, lithium was preferred to sodium as the material of choice and it has been widely used ever since for portable electronic devices such as tablets, laptops and electric vehicles. However, lithium has a major drawback in that it is fairly rare on our planet. Teams from the RS2E (with the CNRS as the leading partner) therefore turned towards sodium, a thousand times more abundant. They developed sodium-ion battery prototypes where sodium ions move from one electrode to another in a liquid during the charge and discharge cycles.
Related Stories
New findings at Oregon State University have overturned a scientific dogma that stood for decades, by showing that potassium can work with graphite in a potassium-ion battery – a discovery that could pose a challenge and sustainable alternative to the widely-used lithium-ion battery.
Lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous in devices all over the world, ranging from cell phones to laptop computers and electric cars. But there may soon be a new type of battery based on materials that are far more abundant and less costly.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @04:49AM
Hans Reiser did not one thing wrong. Not one thing.
The Mountain Man in Colorado did not do anything wrong either?
They both faithfully executed a commandment in Deuteronomy for their God
(Score: 1) by Schafer2 on Monday November 30 2015, @06:14AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gravis on Monday November 30 2015, @06:37AM
I thought the cost of lithium in a lithium ion battery was not significant.
currently the price of lithium isn't very high but the demand for lithium based batteries could increase by orders of magnitude due to electric vehicles. there is a fairly limited supply of it, so greedy people will up the cost just because of the demand. on the other hand, you can get sodium from the oceans themselves.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday November 30 2015, @06:56AM
I'm not a big fan of laissez-faire-capitalism, either, but in this case I wouldn't know any fairer mechanism for how to distribute existing lithium resources. It's just a free market, not even with a strong monopoly, which will drive the price up.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Informative) by mth on Monday November 30 2015, @07:04AM
Lithium can also be extracted from sea water. The lithium contents of sea water (~0.18 ppm) are a lot lower than sodium (~11000 ppm), so it will be more expensive, but it still wouldn't make lithium batteries prohibitly expensive.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Monday November 30 2015, @07:46AM
I recall reading somewhere that if lithium doubles in price, it becomes economically viable to extract it from seawater.
This puts a fairly hard upper limit on the price of it, as there is quite a lot of seawater.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gravis on Monday November 30 2015, @06:52AM
the supply/demand and price keep increasing. [nanalyze.com] if all our cars started using a few hundred lithium cells, that price would jump to match.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday November 30 2015, @06:26AM
i'm impressed by how far they have taken it already. it looks like this will de-throne the lithium based chemistry pretty quickly because of cost alone. right now it looks like they are just working out the manufacturing details and tweaking it. i rarely put a lot of stock into new battery tech news but this looks quite promising.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday November 30 2015, @06:52AM
This sounds like the perfect cue to give some information on why lithium was preferred, what were the technical disadvantages of sodium, and how they were overcome. Scarcity of Lithium is well-known already.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fritsd on Monday November 30 2015, @01:41PM
Ok.. I'll try to remember some chemistry I learnt ages ago..
In order to have electricity flow, you either have to move the electrons or negative ions one way, or the positive ions the other way.
Negative ions take up more "room", in the sense that it costs more energy to move them around in the matrix, than positive ions. This "ionic radius" [wikipedia.org] is something that doesn't really exist on a quantum level but it's a useful approximation anyway.
Now the alkali metals have an outer orbital shell with just 1 electron in it, so if they lose it they become a +1 charged ion with a much smaller radius. Same goes for the chalcogenids next to them but they have to be ionised twice.
Lithium is ideal because it is really tiny and light, which means you can let Li+ ions flow from the electrode into the matrix, and back when you recharge the battery. Beryllium 2+ is also OK but it's both expensive and poisonous.
Sodium (Na+) and Magnesium (Mg2+) are a lot bulkier (next row) but abundant and therefore cheap.
There's a Sodium-Sulphur battery that I've read a bit about. It works only at elevated temperatures (when both Sodium and Sulphur are molten) but the ingredients are at least cheap.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday November 30 2015, @04:42PM
Thanks for the explanation. Sounds reasonable.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @10:32PM
OK, look, everything has a reduction potential. The following is a standard reduction potential chart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_electrode_potential_%28data_page%29 [wikipedia.org]
If you don't have a standard cell you can often use the Nernst equation to estimate the potential (assuming you are relatively close to a standard cell and the relative concentrations aren't too far off).
So one thing gets oxidized as another gets reduced. The thing that is getting reduced accepts electrons. The thing that is getting oxidized donates electrons. Electrons travel from whatever it is that is being oxidized (giving up electrons) to whatever it is that is being reduced. The thing that is being reduced deposits as a solid and the thing that is being oxidized turns into ions into solution as it gives up electrons.
That chart tells you how readily a standard cell of something wants to be reduced relative to a standard hydrogen cell. If it has a negative value that's an indication of how strongly it doesn't want to accept electrons relative to a standard hydrogen cell. You would either have to use a standard cell of something that is more determined to give up its electrons than this is to not accept them or you can use electrolysis with a voltage strong enough to force the desired reaction to occur.
That reduction chart will tell you which reactions, given a standard cell, will and won't occur spontaneously. If you have two containers with different substances you can use the standard reduction potentials of both substances, combine the half reactions, and determine if the reaction will occur spontaneously and with what voltage when measured with a meter.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday December 06 2015, @11:32AM
It feels like a century ago since I last held a calomel electrode, and I was quite bad at electrochemistry, but I think you describe "normal" batteries, like e.g. Zink - salmiak - MnO2. Normally it is as you say that the electrons flow (they're small and can either move or hop along) and the thing that is being reduced deposits as a solid on the cathode. It isn't supposed to move much.
I hope I didn't confuse the cathode and anode again just now.
AFAIK the trick with the modern Lithium ion cells is that not just the electrons flow but also the actual Li ions flow the other direction. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Electrochemistry [wikipedia.org]). So then the battery's functioning and rechargability is partially determined by how easy it is for those ions to move, because they don't just stay huddled around the electrodes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mth on Monday November 30 2015, @07:19AM
The batteries have displayed performance levels comparable to their lithium counterparts
That statement is a bit misleading. What the article says:
Its energy density (the quantity of electricity that can be stored by Kg of battery) amounts to 90Wh/kg, a figure already comparable with the first lithium-ion batteries.
Today's lithium-ion batteries are quite a bit better than the first ones were, so sodium-ion batteries have some catching up to do.
Note that for mobile applications like gadgets and cars, the energy density is very important, but for stationary batteries to for example store electricity from solar panels for use when it's dark, it would be fine if they weighed a bit more but were cheaper to make. The sodium-ion prototype already out-performs lead-acid batteries which store about 40Wh/kg.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by physicsmajor on Monday November 30 2015, @01:41PM
All true. What isn't detailed is charge density as a function of time or number of cycles. For grid purposes they need to be stable on both metrics, otherwise lead acid is still going to reign.