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posted by mrpg on Wednesday October 11 2017, @05:45AM   Printer-friendly

As a warming world moves from fossil fuels toward renewable solar and wind energy, industrial forecasts predict an insatiable need for battery farms to store power and provide electricity when the sky is dark and the air is still. Against that backdrop, Stanford researchers have developed a sodium-based battery that can store the same amount of energy as a state-of-the-art lithium ion, at substantially lower cost.

Chemical engineer Zhenan Bao and her faculty collaborators, materials scientists Yi Cui and William Chueh, aren't the first researchers to design a sodium ion battery. But they believe the approach they describe in an Oct. 9 Nature Energy paper has the price and performance characteristics to create a sodium ion battery costing less than 80 percent of a lithium ion battery with the same storage capacity.

"Nothing may ever surpass lithium in performance," Bao said. "But lithium is so rare and costly that we need to develop high-performance but low-cost batteries based on abundant elements like sodium."

With materials constituting about one-quarter of a battery's price, the cost of lithium – about $15,000 a ton to mine and refine – looms large. That's why the Stanford team is basing its battery on widely available sodium-based electrode material that costs just $150 a ton.

Sodium batteries taste better, too.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 11 2017, @08:47AM (4 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @08:47AM (#580349) Journal

    Unless the book describes in detail how those sodium batteries worked, no it isn't prior art.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @09:31AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @09:31AM (#580363)

    In a SoylentNews comment, KritonK made a joke. I wonder if maxwell demon will ever develop enough of a sense of humor to realize it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @10:25AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @10:25AM (#580373)

    But 20000 Leagues Under the Sea is art and is prior to this invention.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:04PM (#580701) Journal

      But it is not "art" in the technical subject matter of this invention.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday October 11 2017, @09:40PM

        by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @09:40PM (#580807)

        Under the current insane USPTO, Jules Verne owns a patent on any sodium batteries for all eternity.
        But he still has to pay royalties to Volta.