Sodium Ion batteries?

[UFO pilot]

Hey all, anyone know the scoop on Na+ batteries? The limited YT videos I have seen sound promising as a way to move away from Lithium but I don't know enough to know what I don't know.
As some may know, Bluetti has come to market with a portable Na+ power station, first on the market I think, but it has modest specs for now.
I emailed Jackery, fellow Californians and all, and they basically said they remain comitted to the NaLiPO4 developement for now. I feel this lets the Chinese become the dominant supplier of a technology that could unseat our dependance on Lithium batteries.....but I am also just a little guy consumer.
Anyone else wonder if Na+ has the potential to unseat Lithium?

 

[nikitis]

I've looked into them. From what I know the recharge rate on them is high but they don't last quite as long as lithium per charge.

Which would mean that for longevity applications it's good, but would require more of them to keep the same volume of power, which is fine for world applications like cities, towns, powerplants, etc, but for bus/car applications, which size constraints are a thing, Lithium will still be king for the foreseeable future.

At least that's what little info I can glean from the internets.

I know Elon specifically is working on optimizing the ion flow with them, which may give us close to the volume of lithiums size, but the same tech could be given to lithium which would just serve to make lithium last even longer which tells me, it's not as powerful as lithium is and likely never will be.

A lot of efficiency is wasted on parking ions. Elon equated it to cars in a parking lot. When the parking lot is full, cars have to drive around to find a spot to park, and this is the loss of efficiency. Ion's work similarly and need to find their place to park in the battery on charge, so he thinks if he can design a battery in a way it's easier to find the "parking space", they'll be more efficient, charge faster, but still not necessarily be as powerful per square inch as lithium.

 

[UFO pilot]

Thanks for the reply! I really am hoping the Na+ is adopted as an alternative to Lithium, as Li is almost all from China and Sodium is found all over the world.
We shall see.

 

[nikitis]

Tesla has a lithium farm in the USA, and it's expanding as well. So US Options are increasing slowly. Also the NA+ batteries have even less use per charge than AGM currently.

 

[Kentucky Dreaming]

Tesla has a lithium farm in the USA, and it's expanding as well. So US Options are increasing slowly. Also the NA+ batteries have even less use per charge than AGM currently.

Lithium farm? Where can I buy lithium seeds? What is the best fertilizer for growing it in the heavy clay soil in Kentucky?

 

[nikitis]

Lithium farm? Where can I buy lithium seeds? What is the best fertilizer for growing it in the heavy clay soil in Kentucky?

You do know how Lithium is processed right? In brine pools.

So yeah. Lithium Farms.

 

[Rucker]

Hey all, anyone know the scoop on Na+ batteries? The limited YT videos I have seen sound promising as a way to move away from Lithium but I don't know enough to know what I don't know.
As some may know, Bluetti has come to market with a portable Na+ power station, first on the market I think, but it has modest specs for now.
I emailed Jackery, fellow Californians and all, and they basically said they remain comitted to the NaLiPO4 developement for now. I feel this lets the Chinese become the dominant supplier of a technology that could unseat our dependance on Lithium batteries.....but I am also just a little guy consumer.
Anyone else wonder if Na+ has the potential to unseat Lithium?

Lithium is a bazillion times better than lead acid, and new technology is always more expensive (and crappy at first). I'll buy Sodium Ion batteries when Walmart is selling them--though I won't be buying from Walmart...
Just a curiosity at this point.

 

[Beeb2]

Will Prowse on youtube has a view videos on sodium batteries. I didn't watch them in full, but I scrubbed through them and my takeaway was that they're (currently) not worth it. New technology is always getting better, and maybe there will be a breakthrough, but as of right now it seems that LiFePo4 wins easily over them.

 

[nikitis]

As I was stating earlier they won't be viable for bus builds ever. They don't provide enough juice. The only reason they are a good option is it's cheaper to make, abundant, and work for solutions that have a lot of space like a facility to store them. They get worse usable electrical storage than even AGM.

Lithium gets like 95% usage per charge.
AGM gets like 40% at best of usable charge without damage.
NA+ gets like 30% of use per charge and takes longer to charge but is easier to build without rare earths and without being dependable on China which is why they even consider making them in the first place. As a solar farm storage method with large farms it's a good nighttime storage solution.

For scenarios where you can't store 29 of them in a bus due to weight to get the same efficiency from Lithium, it's not practical.