How Sodium-Ion Batteries Might perchance even Jabber Lithium

The future is electric. Everything from cars, toconsumer electronics to renewable energy storage isdependent on our ability to build more and betterbatteries. Today, lithium-ionbatteries dominate those markets, but demand for thecritical minerals needed to make lithium-ion batteriesis predicted to outstrip supply. That, combined withcost considerations and concerns over energysecurity, are leading.

Companies and countries toconsider alternative battery chemistries. With challenges around, say,lithium, nickel, cobalt supply, some OEMs haveturned to sodium ion. Sodium-ion batteries have asimilar design to lithium-ion batteries,which means the two can be manufactured using similarmethods. Both generate electricitythrough a chemical reaction and are made up of ananode, cathode, separator.

And an electrolyte. But ina sodium-ion battery, lithium ions are replacedwith sodium ions in the battery's cathode, andlithium salts swapped for sodium salts in theelectrolyte. Like lithium, sodium, which is part ofsalt, needs to be chemically processed before it canbecome the feedstock that goes into the cathode andelectrolyte. Sodium is right by lithiumon the periodic table, which means that the two arechemically very similar, but.

Sodium is much moreabundant. It's also cheaper. Although still in itsinfancy, the market for sodium-ion batteries isexpected to be worth over $11 billion by 2033. While sodium-ion batteriescan't compete with lithium-ion batteries interms of range in electric vehicles, they do presentsome unique advantages. It doesn't use the expensiveraw materials. There's no cobalt, there'sno copper, there's no.

Lithium, there's nographite, which is really primarily controlled byChina today. What we're actually going tosee is a production Natron battery cell that's beenfully charged. And actually we're going todrill straight through it with a hole saw. And what we're going tofind is it's just going to sit there. You know,there's no safety hazard. There's no fire.

Chinese battery giant, CATL,recently announced that it would supply automaker,Chery, with sodium-ion batteries for its EVs. Other battery companieslike SVOLT and French-based startup Tiamat are pursuingsimilar technology. CNBC spoke to two companies,California-based Natron Energy and UK-basedFaradian about their plans to commercialize sodium-ionbatteries and the technology's place in theevolving battery market.

Sodium-ion batteries havebeen around since about the 1970s and 80 seconds, butlarge-scale development of the technology wasabandoned in favor of lithium-ion batteries. But now, the technology isgetting a second look. Excitement aroundsodium-ion batteries was reignited after the world'slargest EV battery maker, CATL, revealed it wasinvesting in the technology in 2021, with plans toestablish a basic industrial.

Supply chain by 2023. Similar to lithium-ionbatteries, sodium-ion battery cathodes can bemade of different materials, which companies areexperimenting with to give their batteries specificproperties. But overall, the materials used to makesodium-ion batteries tend to be cheaper than thematerials used in lithium-ion batteries. This cell, about 80% of thecost of the cell is the.

Materials. And if youcompare it with the bill of materials for lithium, involume, you're looking at between 24 to 32% lessexpensive for the bill of materials for sodium ioncompared to lithium ion. Besides doing away withlithium, sodium-ion batteries do not requirethe use of other critical materials like cobalt,which has been associated with human rights abuses. Plus, sodium can be foundanywhere.

It's hugely abundant. It's not just widelyavailable in terms of the current sources of sodiumin sea salt, but it's contained in the crust ofthe earth around the world as well. Lithium, themajority of that is within basically three countries,Australia, China and Chile, and developing to be ahandful of more countries, but still hugelyconcentrated. 70 or so percent of the currentcobalt production is in the.

Democratic Republic ofCongo. And again, the vastmajority of that is being refined in China. So sothese are obviously key bottlenecks in terms of thesupply chain. Another draw of sodium-ionbatteries is that they have a longer cycle life,meaning that the battery can be charged and dischargedmore times than lithium-ion batteries and can operatein a wider range of temperatures.

With sodium-ion batteries wehave a very wide temperature operating range. So down to -30 and all theway up to plus 60. We've demonstratedcapability to go up to plus 80 degrees C as well. And that again is becauseof the intrinsic elements of the electrolyte and thematerials that we're able to use. Battery fires have also beenan issue that's dogged.

Lithium-ion technology, butexperts say sodium-ion batteries will be muchsafer. Lithium ion, you always needto have 30 to 40% charge in a battery. That's why whenyou get on a plane and they ask you to take out yourbatteries, if you're going to check in a bag, it's forthose reasons because they can become unstable andcatch fire. And sodium ion is veryunique in that way that we can ship these at zerovolts.

So it's like essentiallyshipping a bag of electrolyte, not an activebattery. For all of its advantages,the Achilles heel of sodium-ion technology hasbeen its energy density, which is the amount ofelectrical power a battery can store with respect toits mass. What this means is that inorder to hold the same electrical charge, sodiumbatteries need to be bigger and heavier than theirlithium counterparts, which.

Can be a problem for EVs,where space is limited. Today, sodium-ion batterieshave an energy density similar to that of lithiumiron phosphate batteries. Lithium ion chemistriescontaining nickel, manganese and cobalt have the highestenergy densities. These energy densitiestranslate to range in electric vehicles. Despite its diminishedrange, experts say sodium-ion technology has apromising future and.

Companies are rushing toramp up production. One of those companies isFaradian, which was founded in the UK in 2011. In 2022, Indianconglomerate Reliance Industries acquired thestartup for $135 Million. Reliance owned captivedemand is massive. They have the largest oilrefinery in the world moving to renewable energy. They have one of thelargest telecom companies in.

The world with Jio, andthey have one of the largest retail businesses in theworld. So there's all these powerrequirements. There's delivery vehicles,there's telecom applications. The cathode in Faradion'sbattery cells is a chemistry known as sodium layeredoxide and contains sodium, nickel, manganese,magnesium, titanium and oxygen. The anode is madeof hard carbon, which comes.

From coconut shells orother biomass materials. Quinn says Faradian isinitially focusing on producing batteries for thestationary energy storage market. This can includethings like providing backup power for telecom companiesor storing excess energy generated by renewableresources like wind and solar, either on the gridscale or in individual homes. Next, Faradion plansto expand into the low speed electric vehicle market.

Think electric bikes,scooters and rickshaws. Heavy machinery likeforklifts are also a contender for Faradion'sbatteries. Faradion installed itsfirst sodium-ion battery for energy storage in Australiain 2022. The company says itsbatteries are already competitive with lithiumiron phosphate technology. In our production-size cellsthey currently are 160 watt hours per kilo. And we'vegot development activities.

That are taking us to 190,200 plus watt hours per kilo. As it continues to improvethe energy density of its batteries, Faradion doessee a future where it moves into the EV market,starting with commercial vehicles such as busses andtrucks that have more room to accommodate largerbatteries. EV is a more crowded space. It's a much morechallenging market.

It requires a lot morecapital and there's longer design cycles. On the otherhand, you know, because there's so much interest inour technology, it's certainly important to beon their roadmap and to be collaborating with some ofthose companies because you do want to to be able tohave a seat at the table. The challenge for Faradionnow is scaling up production. The company isbuilding an R&D facility in the UK to continuedeveloping its technology,.

As well as working onexpanding production with factories in India. We're building up pilotfacilities to go into the hundreds of ton range, bothfrom the material side and cell manufacturing side,and then also in parallel building up thegigafactories to be able to go up into the gigawatthour scale per year. Natron Energy is anothercompany trying to commercialize sodium-ionbattery technology.

Founded in 2012, in SantaClara, California, as a spinoff of StanfordUniversity, Natron focuses on making sodium-ionbatteries using a sodium-rich material basedon the pigment Prussian blue. Prussian blue is a consumerproduct. It's a pigment. You'll findit in paint, blue jeans, all sorts of things. It turnsout that it's also great at storing energy in the formof sodium ions.

In general, it is arelatively simple compound to formulate. Any chemicalplants with quality control and process control to makehigh-purity material can make Prussian blue. For its battery cells,Natron uses a sodium material rich in iron forthe cathode and a manganese-rich sodiummaterial for the anode. The anode and the cathodeelectrodes are deposited onto aluminum foil, similarto what you'd have in your.

Kitchen. The packaging ismade of this laminate material that's aluminumfoil coated with plastic. In between the twoelectrodes, we would have some kind of separator andthat separator is effectively plastic wrapwith a little bit of silica. So so glass dust embeddedinto the plastic. And that's really about it. Natron has outsourcedproduction of its electrode material to specialchemical maker Arxada in.

Switzerland. The company iscontinuing its R&D efforts and runs a pilot-scaleproduction line where it says it can produce between100 and 200 battery systems per month. One of the advantages ofsodium-ion technology is that it can use the samemanufacturing plants as lithium-ion batteries. Natron is taking advantageof this, partnering with Clarios to use part of thelithium-ion battery maker's.

Michigan plant to beginlarge-scale manufacturing of its sodium-ion batteries inthe fall of 2023. The beauty of that specificplant is it's sort of medium volume. You know, it givesus an opportunity to prove that we can manufacturethese sodium-ion batteries on lithium-ion lines beforewe then go out and build a global-scale plant. But atsome point in 2024, next year, we're going to berunning this plant at a rate of about 3.5 to 4 millionbattery cells per year.

The company is not initiallyfocusing on the EV market. Instead, Natron istargeting the data center market, where it says itsbatteries can provide backup power in the case of anoutage. EV fast charging stations are anotherpossible future market. Natron is already testingthis application with investor Chevron. Imagine pulling into thisstation. There are a whole bunch ofchargers there and all the.

Cars plug in at the sametime. And now the power load on the electric grid isenormous. It can be really hard forthe grid to support all those vehicle chargessimultaneously. And so a lot of stationoperators are actually moving to a model wherethey would put big stationary batteries in thestation to provide those pulses of power to chargethe vehicles. United Airlines has alsoinvested in Natron and plans.

To use the company'sbatteries to electrify its ground operations. Wessells says that Natronhas raised about $175 million since its inceptionfrom a number of investors, including ABB and KhoslaVentures, among others. Natron and Faradian are justtwo of a number of companies trying to commercializesodium-ion battery technology. This as anumber of carmakers have already announced plans toincorporate sodium-ion.

Batteries into theirelectric vehicles. As with lithium-iontechnology, China is leading the charge in embracingsodium-ion batteries. Out of the 20 sodiumbattery factories now planned or already inconstruction around the world, 16 are in China. The domination that Chinahas in the current lithium-ion supply chain,there is a risk that that now extends to thesodium-ion supply chain.

Depending on wheresodium-ion cell production capacity is built out. And at the moment, it'slooking like China is going to dominate in that, too. Most experts believe thatsodium-ion batteries have the potential to act intandem with lithium-ion technology, alleviatingsome of its supply constraints rather thanreplacing it entirely. Ten years out, I thinksodium ion is going to have.

A very strong position inindustrial power and grid energy storage. Forelectric vehicles, there are going to be certain marketsegments where sodium ion is a great fit. The jury isreally out on whether or not that's going to includemainstream passenger vehicles. We can see afuture in which there could be a lower cost sodium ionoption and that could be a lower trim line on a car. And it may not have quitethe same range, but it would.

Be less expensive. I think where you're seeinglithium iron phosphate, you'll see sodium iontaking market share. I mean, lithium ion has acouple of decades head start over sodium ion. So we willcertainly be taking market share on that for someforeseeable future. As with any new technology,success usually comes with scale, which sodium-ionbattery companies have yet to build out.

Keeping up with the scale ofgrowth of the battery market is going to be one of theprobably the largest challenge for sodium ion toreach large market penetration. Still, sodium-ion batterymanufacturers remain optimistic about thetechnology's future. This is a once in ageneration transition from fossil fuels to greenenergy on a global basis, and sodium ion is going tocontinue to play a big role.

With that.

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