Replacing lithium with sodium in batteries:
An international team of scientists from NUST MISIS, Russian Academy of Science and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf has found that instead of lithium (Li), sodium (Na) "stacked" in a special way can be used for battery production.
[...] They found that if the atoms inside the sample are "stacked" in a certain way, then alkali metals other than lithium also demonstrate high energy intensity. The most promising replacement for lithium is sodium (Na), since a two-layer arrangement of sodium atoms in bigraphen sandwich demonstrates anode capacity comparable to the capacity of a conventional graphite anode in Li-ion batteries—about 335 mA*h/g against 372 mA*h/g for lithium. However, sodium is much more common than lithium, and therefore cheaper and more easily obtained.
Journal Reference:
Ilya V. Chepkasov, Mahdi Ghorbani-Asl, Zakhar I. Popov, et al. Alkali metals inside bi-layer graphene and MoS2: Insights from first-principles calculations [open], Nano Energy (DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.104927)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2020, @04:55AM (3 children)
and you thought lithium battery fires were bad..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2020, @07:42AM
Big Badda Boom! Just love Mila Jonovich.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday July 19 2020, @08:44AM
Bad? Depends on your point of view. If I'm in it, yeah. If I just get to watch it...
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Sunday July 19 2020, @10:12AM
Heh, I am reminded of this scene in Invader Zim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDIgS-Soo9Q [youtube.com]
Zim: "I put the fires out."
Tallest: "You made them worse."
Zim: "Worse, or better?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2020, @12:07PM (3 children)
Replace the lithium with plutonium... high energy intensity and there's plenty of it lying around Chernobyl.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2020, @01:40PM
Go all out and put some dilithium crystals surrounded by a cyclotron shell in the battery.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday July 19 2020, @02:26PM (1 child)
Beta batteries are a real thing [wikipedia.org].
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 20 2020, @02:35PM
Yeah, but they're not rechargeable, and their extremely high energy density is offset by their terribly low power density.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2020, @03:11PM (1 child)
i wonder if it's possible to "store" natrium in water safely?
normally it reacts violantly, yes?
consider the case where there's salty brine water and we use electricity to generate chlorine gas.
salt, as in brine, is Na-Cl ... so after liberating the Cl as gas what is left behind should ... xplode(?) or does it "fallout" as Na metal but underwater?
(Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Sunday July 19 2020, @04:05PM