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New sodium ion battery stores twice the energy and desalinates seawater
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Zwuzelmaus feddit.org Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org
Joined: 2024-12-14
#52 · Quote Reply

Would you prefer researchers to not publish results?

Would you prefer

Not at all!

I like serious publications very much, and I was also well humored by all these shoutings about revolutions...

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Croquette sh.itjust.works Croquette@sh.itjust.works
Joined: 2023-06-15
#53 · Quote Reply

Some progress is being made, but it hasn't seen large-scale adoption yet. Which is the point, as I read it.

It takes time to scale production and even more time to adopt a new technology.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#54 · Quote Reply

Yes, because battery technology stagnated years ago... Oh wait

All that data says is batteries got cheaper so they are putting more of them into cars. Also 100 to 300 wh/kg is in labs. No explanation why it went from 175 to 100 Wh/kg 08-10.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#55 · Quote Reply

Well all those graphs show is that the cost of batteries has gone down and that as a result electric cars contain more batteries and therefore more range. It doesn't actually show that the individual battery capacity has increased. The third graph that indicates battery performance vs battery chemistry doesn't really show incremental improvement it just shows general improvement but there's ple...

Shhhh.....we're having a bullshit feel good moment...

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apftwb lemmy.world apftwb@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-06-22
#56 · Quote Reply

mAh/g (milliamp-hours per gram) is essentially still a measurement of capacity, but in terms of current instead of power. We can do a little dimensional analysis here to translate between them. Power = Current x Voltage, so you'd multiply this (Current x Time)/(Weight) value by the nominal voltage of the cell to get to (Power x Time)/(Weight). Phone batteries are often specified in units of Cur...

multiply this (Current x Time)/(Weight) value by the nominal voltage of the cell to get to (Power x Time)/(Weight).

This is the part that annoys me. The nominal voltage could vary between different batteries. 200Ah/g means different capacity for a 6v battery verses a 48v battery. I'm guessing battery scientists are using standardized nominal voltages for these tests or are seeing the same Ah/g capacity at different voltages (that I may have simply missed in the paper because I skimmed it and I don't claim any deeper knowledge on battery research)

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#57 · Quote Reply

This too is false, great progress has been made on for instance solid state batteries.

You can't buy anything with solid state batteries yet, and when you can, they will cost a fortune.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#58 · Quote Reply

It takes time to scale up production, CATL is already building factories for it: https://www.catl.com/en/news/6401.html On April 21, 2025, CATL unveiled three groundbreaking EV battery products at its inaugural Super Tech Day: The Freevoy Dual-Power Battery, Naxtra - the world's first mass produced sodium-ion battery

These press releases are weekly. Naxtra will be 30% cheaper, but also bigger and heavier. The problem here is the damn periodic table, someone should change it.

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apftwb lemmy.world apftwb@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-06-22
#59 · Quote Reply

[deleted]

The photo choice is a big one that always bothers me with these articles.

Article photo.

Actual lab setup.
https://www.rsc.org/suppdata/d5/ta/d5ta05128b/d5ta05128b2.mp4

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#60 · Quote Reply

TBF, there are a lot of "battery breakthroughs" that turn out to just be hot air. Battery technology has made tremendous progress though and there is still a lot of room for improvement.

There actually is not a lot of room for improvement. Highest energy will still be limited to lithium chemistry because of the periodic table.

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Croquette sh.itjust.works Croquette@sh.itjust.works
Joined: 2023-06-15
#61 · Quote Reply

Sodium ion batteries have less energy density as opposed to Lithium ion (100-150 WH per Kg instead of 150-250). I'm curious how much these "wet" batteries improve that. The article doesn't say. Nonetheless, even if it's not the new battery for your car, it could be useful as energy storage for the grid, storing green (solar) energy for the night, and desalinating seawater at the same time.

My very uneducated understanding is that sodium batteries can be produced virtually anywhere.

Not every battery application needs to maximize energy density, so sodium batteries are good where that is the case.

I also did not read about sodium ion batteries characteristics versus lithium ion, so there might also be other use cases where sodium ion batteries are better.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#62 · Quote Reply

Desalinating water might be the best part. Usually, solar power has the downside of needing storage and desalination has the downside of big energy requirements. If you can do both at the same time, it's a big win for dry climates with lots of sun

They are not going to get the sodium from desalination, they will mine it because it's cheaper.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#63 · Quote Reply

Exactly this, there's a huge market for energy storage, where cost, power and cycle life matter way more than size and weight. And Na-ion can be produced in countries that do not have access to lithium mines, making transport less of an issue and countries more self-sustaining.

Hilarious....all of these batteries are coming out of one country because only one country is doing serious R&D.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#64 · Quote Reply

Would you prefer researchers to not publish results?

I prefer the media not mindlessly overhype scientific publications.

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0tan0d lemmy.world 0tan0d@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-02-12
#65 · Quote Reply

Unless other situations where the established technology wins due to inertia, sodium ion batteries have two benefits that make them interesting regardless: Firstly, they are safer. A punctured sodium ion battery doesn't catch fire, which massively simplifies safety design. That makes them very attractive for certain scenarios, especially ones where density is a secondary concern. That in turn m...

They also perform better in the cold making them a better choice for EVs in cold regions. This is why I think CATL saw the videos of cars getting killed by cold and pulled the trigger on retooling even with the lithium price crash.

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Diplomjodler lemmy.world Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world
Joined: 2024-01-08
#66 · Quote Reply

There actually is not a lot of room for improvement. Highest energy will still be limited to lithium chemistry because of the periodic table.

That's a limit on gravimetric energy density. There are plenty of other parameters that can be improved.

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chronicledmonocle lemmy.world chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-24
#67 · Quote Reply

What are you gonna do with your 400 charge cycles?

Charge cycles tend to improve as technology and processes improve. Other sodium ion batteries started out similarly limited in cycles and have since basically matched lithium ion.

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yabbadabaddon lemmy.zip yabbadabaddon@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2026-02-02
#68 · Quote Reply

There is also the issue with the salt by itself in desalinisation. If it's removed with water, you have to deal with that stuff. Table salt is really cheap and there is plenty of offer,, so you can't really economically clean it enough and package it for human consumption or industrial use. So what usually happens is that they dump it back at one moment or another. And that is a hard pollution,...

I need a shit ton of salt in winter for my road. But for how long?

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CaptPretentious lemmy.world CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-30
#69 · Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

Weird, I didn't know Lithium-Ion batteries were still in the lab. I thought for sure we were using those already. I thought the batteries in the labs were various solid-state batteries like graphene or like this sodium-ion battery, where there's been a rise in patents around it but not a lot delivered

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floquant lemmy.dbzer0.com floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2024-05-31
#70 · (edited) Quote Reply

All that data says is batteries got cheaper so they are putting more of them into cars. Also 100 to 300 wh/kg is in labs. No explanation why it went from 175 to 100 Wh/kg 08-10.

No explanation? You might want to get checked for color blindness

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humanspiral lemmy.ca humanspiral@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2024-10-23
#71 · Quote Reply

Sodium Ion already does 5000+ cycles. Adding Vanadium is not a scalable material. It is very expensive. 400 cycles steady is not useful information because it needs to do much more. They didn't state a wh/kg density. This is probably not a viable research vector, but "big Vanadium" has proposed a rental model to make Vanadium more scarce for other applications. Flow batteries (a fuel cell with tanks of electrolytes) provides an ultra easy way of recycling/selling the vanadium for traditional uses. Battery rental that forces returning it could be viable.

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Clent lemmy.dbzer0.com Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2024-12-13
#72 · Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

There is a branch of battery research that is only focused on grid storage. It's the last piece to make solar and to a less extent wind unbeatably affordable.

In a home solar setup, batteries are the other half of the cost and have not fallen as fast as the cost of the panels themselves, the other half of the cost. For fully off grid setups, they quickly become the main cost.

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GreyEyedGhost piefed.ca GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca
Joined: 2025-11-30
#73 · Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

No, that's why we use the same batteries Voltaire did on his frogs.

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trongod_requiem0432 lemmy.world trongod_requiem0432@lemmy.world
Joined: 2026-02-10
#74 · Quote Reply

They are not going to get the sodium from desalination, they will mine it because it's cheaper.

and more pure

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trongod_requiem0432 lemmy.world trongod_requiem0432@lemmy.world
Joined: 2026-02-10
#75 · Quote Reply

What do they do with the Chlorine though?

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WorldsDumbestMan lemmy.today WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
Joined: 2024-12-05
#76 · Quote Reply

What is the catch?

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GreyEyedGhost piefed.ca GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca
Joined: 2025-11-30
#77 · Quote Reply

All that data says is batteries got cheaper so they are putting more of them into cars. Also 100 to 300 wh/kg is in labs. No explanation why it went from 175 to 100 Wh/kg 08-10.

We've had 3 major changes in battery chemistry in the last 45 years. Energy density, lifespan, cost, and dangerous materials have all generally improved. We also have 2 new battery technologies in the process of becoming generally commercially available. Also, batteries went from 500 mAh batteries about the size of your smartphone to 3000 mAh as a minor component of that same smartphone, about an order of magnitude in energy density.

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WorldsDumbestMan lemmy.today WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
Joined: 2024-12-05
#78 · Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

@Warl0k3@lemmy.world The hero we need!

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GreyEyedGhost piefed.ca GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca
Joined: 2025-11-30
#79 · Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

Well, the downside of this not being a 4x game is that sometimes research doesn't pan out, and you don't know which ones until after you're done.

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Reygle lemmy.world Reygle@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-20
#80 · Quote Reply

Every week with the "miracle battery!" headlines. This has been going on for ages and I'm sick of it.

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WorldsDumbestMan lemmy.today WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
Joined: 2024-12-05
#81 · Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

If only they could build say...a 15W nuclear battery that can last 50 years, THAT would be something. Enough for a very low-power smartphone, one who's CPU is clocked down so that it can't drain energy too fast. And ruggedized as well.

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GamingChairModel lemmy.world GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-05
#82 · Quote Reply

Weird, I didn't know Lithium-Ion batteries were still in the lab. I thought for sure we were using those already. I thought the batteries in the labs were various solid-state batteries like graphene or like this sodium-ion battery, where there's been a rise in patents around it but not a lot delivered

There are a bunch of lithium ion chemistries that have come to market more recently.

LFP sits in the low cost marker while NCA is the highest performing of the mass market batteries, and NMC is somewhere in between.

Sodium might be coming for LFP's low cost position, and is already beginning mass production (some Chinese manufacturers expect those models to hit the road in a few months).

If you think rechargeable battery R&D from 10 years ago isn't making it into mass produced products today, you're just not paying attention.

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nek0d3r lemmy.dbzer0.com nek0d3r@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2024-12-09
#83 · Quote Reply

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#84 · (edited) Quote Reply

We are close to finding out why some liquids are blue.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#85 · Quote Reply

What do they do with the Chlorine though?

Clean chickens.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#86 · Quote Reply

That's a limit on gravimetric energy density. There are plenty of other parameters that can be improved.

There are plenty of other parameters that can be improved.

You don't know that. This is chemistry, not Moore's stupid law.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#87 · Quote Reply

and more pure

Exactly, the desalination gimmick is bullshit for STEM ignorant hippies.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#88 · Quote Reply

No, that's why we use the same batteries Voltaire did on his frogs.

Voltaire was a French poet.

Alessandro Volta was the electrochemist.

JFC..what do they teach in schools any more?

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#89 · Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

LI-ion is pretty efficient compared to NA-ION.

at room temperature, but in the real world, where it gets cold, sodium batteries have an advantage.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#90 · Quote Reply

If only they could build say...a 15W nuclear battery that can last 50 years, THAT would be something. Enough for a very low-power smartphone, one who's CPU is clocked down so that it can't drain energy too fast. And ruggedized as well.

gee..if only we could charge our smartphones. It's expensive throwing them in the river when the battery drains.

1
SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#91 · Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

"coming in 2025"

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Sausagecat lemmy.world Sausagecat@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-09-04
#92 · Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

Could the excess sodium used for carbon sequestration? Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda but I don't know what it could be used for aside from baking or if the energy to capture that carbon would even be a net positive.

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SaveTheTuaHawk lemmy.ca SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-07
#93 · (edited) Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

The "progress" is typical industry bullshit. See the absolute bullshit around the Donut SS battery.

Remember when Musk invented a battery with 30% better capacity? It was a 30% bigger battery.

SS batteries require manufacturing facilities with clean rooms on the order of chip fabs. You may see these in 2027, but only in expensive cars.

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BreakerSwitch lemmy.world BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-06-23
#94 · Quote Reply

In reply to an earlier post

The harder to obtain materials aspect, while long term relevant, is barely a factor right now. Lithium production has exploded and resulted in a massive drop in prices that's making the main consumer appeal for sodium batteries, price, a non-factor and driving some sodium battery producers out of business

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SocialMediaRefugee lemmy.world SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-27
#95 · Quote Reply

Every week with the "miracle battery!" headlines. This has been going on for ages and I'm sick of it.

Right up there with "cause/cure for dementia found"

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SocialMediaRefugee lemmy.world SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-27
#96 · Quote Reply

We are close to finding out why some liquids are blue.

The Institute of Sciencey Things

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SocialMediaRefugee lemmy.world SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-27
#97 · Quote Reply

What do they do with the Chlorine though?

They run a pool service

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SocialMediaRefugee lemmy.world SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-27
#98 · Quote Reply

Sodium Ion already does 5000+ cycles. Adding Vanadium is not a scalable material. It is very expensive. 400 cycles steady is not useful information because it needs to do much more. They didn't state a wh/kg density. This is probably not a viable research vector, but "big Vanadium" has proposed a rental model to make Vanadium more scarce for other applications. Flow batteries (a fuel cell with ...

Right up there with the batteries that would contain about 1 kg of silver in them. Even if they didn't become insanely expensive you'd have tweakers foaming at the mouth to steal your batteries.

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Reygle lemmy.world Reygle@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-20
#99 · Quote Reply

Right up there with "cause/cure for dementia found"

"Dyslexia for cure found!"

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Warl0k3 lemmy.world Warl0k3@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-10-11
#100 · Quote Reply

@Warl0k3@lemmy.world The hero we need!

Did you mean to tag me?

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SocialMediaRefugee lemmy.world SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-27
#101 · Quote Reply

"Dyslexia for cure found!"

We found the cure for Alzheimer's but can't remember what it was. I think it began with a "c". Who are you?

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