A surprising breakthrough could help sodium-ion batteries rival lithium—and even turn seawater into drinking water. Scientists discovered that keeping water inside a key battery material, instead of removing it as traditionally done, dramatically boosts performance. The “wet” version stores nearly twice as much charge, charges faster, and remains stable for hundreds of cycles, placing it among the top-performing sodium battery materials ever reported.
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.
We hear about a new battery chemistry like every week. Do most never get to commercialization?
They mostly these articles are showing new avenues for research. Most are deadends usually due to issues with production/scalability.
Sodium Ions batteries are coming to market, however the issue is that Lithium Ion are just improving faster and making it harder for Sodium Ion batteries to compete.
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 means they get further development money instead of withering on the vine.
Secondly, they require fewer hard-to-obtain materials, which makes them attractive from a strategic perspective. This one should be less important than the safety factor but it’s also relevant.
I’m pretty sure we’ll actually see wet sodium cells in the wild if they are actually practical. Sodium ion tech is already being commercialized and if this brings it within the same ballpark as lithium ion then it becomes a very interesting choice for vehicles due to instant crash safety gains.
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.
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.
No thermal runaway if I remember correct as those are not prone to exploding (unlike li-ion/li-po)
And instead of charging them, you can drink them! Unlike Lithium Ion batteries, which you have to chew.
But can you drink them after they were charged?
And how does that affect the taste?
My dream is to taste lightning.
Should have checked out Benjamin Franklin’s dinner parties when you had a chance.