CATL Unveils First Generation of Sodium-Ion Batteries
catl.com
catl.com
- Cathode material: Prussian white
- up to 160Wh/kg (2nd generation targets 200Wh/kg)
- can charge in 15 minutes to 80% SOC at room temperature
- 90% capacity at -20°C
- Pricing estimates: 26-46$/kWh at GWh production scale, 77$/kWh at smaller production scale [0]
Best mainstream cells cars are made with today are all around 200wh/kg.
240wh/kg NCM cells are there, more or less widely available, but they are almost the same stuff with higher rating, and lower cycle life. Manufacturers basically nudging digits.
If they reach same 200wh/kg, along with equal cycle life to LFP, it can be big.
Energy density does seem to be the main weakness that they're acknowledging.
All previous works on sodium batteries showed very low cycle lives for both cathodes, and anodes.
Since they are not giving it out now, I guess that's it. And this may well be why they keep nailing solely on the point of it being operational at -20C° (which is a big thing for any lithium battery, still)
CATL been very late to the LFP party, especially for the high-end automotive LFP cells.
Companies which made a bet on LFP early are now coming with 200+wh/kg cells, which is already bigger than commodity automotive NCA, something which Foxconn (CATL) makes most money on.
This is a kick below the waistline move to at least throw doubts about business expansion for LFP makers. Currently, 200wh/kg LFP cells are just only now hitting the market, and these LFP cell manufacturers are still making the lion share of their revenue, and profit on storage class, and low-end cells.
If LFP manufacturers believe the new chemistry can wipe out their current cash cow, they will think twice about putting money to expansion in automotive cells.
Compare with lead acid batteries where most of the weight is the lead.
Ferrocyanides — not the cheapest compound to synthesize
Any solid state chemists here who can enlighten us?
The input materials are hydrogen cyanide (cheaply produced from methane and ammonia via the Andrussow process), calcium hydroxide, and iron(II) chloride. Combined, they form ferrocyanide.
Despite the toxic hydrogen cyanide used in production, ferrocyanides are nontoxic because the cyanide is so tightly bound to iron. Potassium ferrocyanide is used as an anticaking agent in table salt.
I have made Prussian blue before by roasting dried blood (organic fertilizer) with sodium hydroxide, extracting with water, and letting it partially oxidize in air. Blood provides both iron and nitrogen. This was an industrial process, historically, before artificial nitrogen fixation.
It doesn't seem to be too expensive, nor too cheap: https://www.alibaba.com/products/sodium_ferrocyanide/CID8020...
Sure its good to have alternatives, but seems LFP will takeover the world except for the premium uses (especially as we get chargers everywhere).
Yes, automotive buyers were having it for less than $100 per kWh for at least 5 years now. Still not sure for which density range these prices are. 190wh/kg LFP cells are now available in retail, and 200wh/kg been around for at least 2 years for automotive, and been used in EV busses from a few manufacturers.
It wouldn't be a stretch to say that biggest, and longest term contracts can get it to $60 per kWh.
Lowest end, storage class LFPs must also be quite cheap in lower volumes, and haven't looked at them for a long time.
Depending on your size. Inverter prices vary most dramatically for minor features, and options.
For batteries only, with shipping, and duties, think of a double of alibaba.com price.
Argh. Where is the big cost? AC convertion? the cooling? pack isolation and protection ? The special logo ?
[1] https://electrek.co/2021/07/26/tesla-reveals-megapack-prices...
Says Google
Basic LFP batteries can be made pretty much in a garage, both cells, and chemicals for cathode/anode.
Most LFP cells were actually made exactly like that 10-8 years ago. People mixing cathodes, and anodes on a bucket, somebody smothering them on foil, and then somebody doing winding, packing, welding, and, finally, sealing all by hand.
Anyway, that gives you 3.36kW of capacity (assuming a 12V 4S config) for $119/kW. To be fair, it will be slightly more when you price in your BMS of choice.
“Energy density” generally refers to the volumetric energy density, where hydrogen is one of the worse methods of storing energy. Hydrogen has the best “specific energy density” or gravimetric energy density, IF it is compressed. You should include both if you want to be accurate.
This is why hydrogen has lost when it comes to cars. Hydrogen has pretty bad energy density to start with, and then you’ve got to store it in cylindrical tanks which is hard to integrate efficiently, and can’t easily be made into a structural member of the car itself.
As a “battery” (with fuel cells) , it also doesn’t have great power density. Power comes for free when adding batteries. Every battery added improves power capacity. Not so with hydrogen. You need to add both hydrogen and more fuel cells to get more power. That’s why BEVs is also doing well for racing cars and hyper cars (see pikes peak race for instance)
In places where volume and power isn’t important, hydrogen could be promising. Trucks and ships are obvious candidates.
First major non-fossil-driven producer of ammonia is under construction in Norway. Another 300 that size will be enough for current world market, but ships will need another 300.
You can make hydrogen tanks a structural member. They're made out of carbon fiber after all.
Modern fuel cells have extremely high power density. You can easily have >300hp in a car. Even higher for large vehicles.
Hydrogen could easily replace batteries in nearly everything. In fact hydrogen cars already have more (real-world) range and 5 minute refueling. You have to get down to laptops and cellphones before the complexity problems makes hydrogen less desirable. People are just deluding themselves by saying hydrogen can't make sense in cars.
why bother with sodium at all? cost ?
As well, heavy industries around the world are looking at ways to electrify their fleets of vehicles working in remote sometimes extreme weather sites. This includes mining sites and marine operations, even consider that airplanes are an eventual target for EV.
Also, charge speed is would surely be the number one gripe for EV ownership, range and performance is pretty much comparable to modern ICE but charge speed, not even close.
As far as I can tell this mostly only a concern among those who do not own an EV.
I am also not amongst the superhumans on the internet who can drive 300mi without my bladder/stomach/legs crying out for a break first.
Being in NYC, the first hour of every trip is at 20mph, the second hour is average about 50mph, and then only if I am going beyond 70mi do I start to hit average speed about 60mph.
Supercharging for ~100mi on the highway is a parallel operation to your bathroom/food break, so its 10 minutes you were already going to use. Gas fill ups are 5 minute serial operations that you either do before or after using the rest area. I suppose if you were on a cannonball run, you could pee in a bottle while pumping gas but I think we can exclude that edge case.
Note that, contra the way it's often explained, cold batteries lose capacity, not energy. If you take a full battery and put it in the freezer, you'll be unable to drain the full charge but it'll come back when it warms up. Think about it: the back of an envelope will show you that if that energy were actually being "lost" from a cold battery, then the battery must actually be very, very hot, because the energy would have had to go somewhere.
Less temperature sensitivity to the range & charge rate would be a huge win.
Otherwise, personally charge rate hasn't been much of a problem because I'm not a big road tripper & have a charger at home.
300mi+ battery means I can drive 2 hours to see my parents & back 2 hours without charging, or drive down 4 hours to see my sister.. which means I'm going to be stopping along the way anyway, and charge 100mi+ while in the rest stop using the restroom, or more if I get a coffee or lunch.
In everyday driving, charge at home off-peak starting 11pm, then its basically irrelevant whether I can unplug at 11:30pm vs 3am.
Charging an EV takes longer, but generally its either at home or at a place you are already doing something else - shopping at Target, getting a coffee at Starbucks, making a pit stop on the highway, etc. Few regular EV drivers just sit in their car for 20min staring into space while they charge.
I think that's something that's often missed in EV discussions that focus on range and who has the best 0-60 time and so on: luxury car features are nice, but in the end what matters more is who can actually make the cheapest good-enough battery at the highest volume, because that's what's going to be in most of the world's cars. Wherever those batteries are made could basically be what Saudi Arabia was to the era of gas-powered vehicles. (Though to be fair you can build a battery factory almost anywhere, whereas oil is something you either have in abundance or you don't.)
Not sure what the inputs are to these sodium ion batteries, but most lithium ion batteries require cobalt, nickel, and lithium. Lithium iron phosphate has an advantage that it doesn't require cobalt or nickel.
These attributes make it a good complement for lithium ion and it looks like CATL already has such a battery already to at least the prototype stage.