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America's First Sodium-Ion Battery Gigafactory Announced. Cost: $1.4 Billion

dimanche 10 novembre 2024, 09:34 , par Slashdot
America's First Sodium-Ion Battery Gigafactory Announced. Cost: $1.4 Billion
Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper than lithium-ion batteries — and they're also more environmentally friendly. And 'In the past few years, sodium-ion battery production has increased in the United States,' reports the Washington Post, with a new factory planned to manufacture them 'in the same way as lithium-ion batteries, just with different ingredients. Instead of using expensive materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt, these will be made of sodium, iron and manganese...'

Last month, sodium-ion battery manufacturer Natron Energy announced it would open a 'gigafactory' in North Carolina that would produce 24 gigawatt hours of batteries annually, enough energy to charge 24,000 electric vehicles. But sodium-ion batteries are still early in their development compared with lithium-ion, and they have yet to hit the market on a massive scale.

'It's unlikely sodium-ion could displace lithium-ion anytime soon,' said Keith Beers, polymer science and materials chemistry principal engineer at technical consultancy firm Exponent... The biggest limitation of sodium-ion batteries is their weight. Sodium weighs nearly three times as much as lithium, and it cannot store the same amount of energy. As a result, sodium-ion batteries tend to be larger. Jens Peters, an economics professor at the University of Alcalá in Madrid, said the energy density could be improved over time in sodium-ion batteries. But, he added, 'what we found out so far in our assessments is that it is not a game changer.'

Sodium-ion batteries are touted to be the environmentally friendly alternative to their lithium-ion counterparts, thanks to their raw materials. Sodium, iron and manganese are all abundant elements on the planet, so they require less energy to extract and cost less... Sodium-ion batteries also last longer than lithium-ion ones because they can withstand more charge cycles, said Wendell Brooks, co-CEO of Natron Energy. 'Our product can have millions of cycles,' said Brooks, 'where lithium-ion would have three to five thousand cycles and wear out a lot faster....' Sodium-ion batteries aren't the best fit for smartphones or electric vehicles, which need to store lots of energy. However, one advantage is their low cost. And they could be a good candidate in situations where the size of the battery isn't a concern, like energy storage. 'When something is built out to support grid or backup storage, it doesn't need to be very dense. It's staying put,' Beers said.

Natron will invest nearly $1.4 billion in the factory 'to meet the rapidly expanding demand for critical power, industrial and grid energy storage solutions,' according to their announcement.

'Natron's high-performance sodium-ion batteries outperform lithium-ion batteries in power density and recharging speed, do not require lithium, cobalt, copper, or nickel, and are non-flammable... Natron's batteries are the only UL-listed sodium-ion batteries on the market today, and will be delivered to a wide range of customer end markets in the industrial power space, including data centers, mobility, EV fast charging, microgrids, and telecom, among others.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/09/0414255/americas-first-sodium-ion-battery-gigafactory-a...

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