Northvolt develops state-of-the-art sodium-ion battery
northvolt.com
Northvolt is proud to add sodium-ion to its cell chemistry portfolio, enabling safe, low-cost, sustainable power for energy storage systems.

In a statement, Northvolt says its validated cell is more safe, cost-effective, and sustainable than conventional nickel, manganese and cobalt (NMC) or iron phosphate (LFP) chemistries and is produced with minerals such as iron and sodium that are abundant on global markets.

It is based on a hard carbon anode and a Prussian White-based cathode, and is free from lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite. Leveraging a breakthrough in battery design and manufacturing, Northvolt plans to be the first to industrialize Prussian White-based batteries and bring them to commercial markets.

Reports across the web also say the technology enables the supply chain to become ecologically more sustainable, cheaper, abd less dependent on China.

  • HaiZhung@feddit.deEnglish
    312·
    7 months ago

    I’d like to relay this comment from hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36834046

    It seems there’s news of a battery breakthrough every week. I’ve learned to temper expectations, because so many “breakthroughs” turn out to be dead ends. Because it’s not enough for a battery to be incredibly light, or made of abundant materials, or last for ten thousand cycles. It needs to be good at many things and at least okay at most things.

    E.g.—

    • How much capacity per dollar?

    • How much capacity per kilogram?

    • How much capacity per litre?

    • How quickly can it be charged?

    • How quickly can it be discharged?

    • How much energy is lost between charging and discharging?

    • How predisposed is it to catching fire?

    • How available are the materials needed to manufacture it?

    • How available are the tools/skills required to manufacture it?

    • How resilient is it to mechanical stress, e.g. vibration?

    • How much does performance degrade per cycle?

    • How much does performance degrade when stored at a high state of charge?

    • How much does performance degrade when stored at a low state of charge?

    • How much does performance drop at high temperatures?

    • How much does performance drop at low temperatures?

    • How well can it be recycled at end-of-life?

    A sufficiently bad answer for any one of these could utterly exclude it from contention as an EV battery. A battery which scores well on everything except mechanical resilience is a non-starter, for example. Though it might be great for stationary storage. I’m only a layperson and this list is what I came up with just a few minutes of layperson thought. I’m sure someone with more familiarity with battery technology could double the length of this list. But the point is, when you daydream about some hypothetical future battery tech, you need to appreciate just how well today’s lithium chemistries score in so many areas