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iIf we plan to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy we'll need batteries as in a lot of batteries and in the world of battery storage lithium ion
batteries rain Supreme however there is one big problem we may not have enough lithium in other
raw materials to make all the batteries we'd need but what if I told you that we might have
already found a possible solution in the form of a new battery that isn't constrained by a limited
supply of a couple of scarce materials enter the sodium ion battery and quick hint it's sort of a
big deal I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci our efforts to replace fossil fuels with clean
and renewable energy has been seriously paying off in the past decade as of the making of this video
There are 16 and a half million electric cars on the streets with 2 million sold during this year's
first quarter alone that's a growth of 75 percent compared to the same period last year in the U.S a
little over 600 000 EVS were sold in 2021 but that number is expected to hit over 4.7 Million by 2030
and could go up into the billions around the world by 2040. that means the demand for batteries for
transportation will continue to grow exponentially for the coming years considering that Lithium-ion
batteries make up between 95 and 99 of the EV battery Market that means that the demand for
lithium and other scarce metals like nickel and Cobalt for the electric car is only going to rise
but it's not just vehicles to replace fossil fuels with intermittent Renewables like solar and wind
we'll need to store the equivalent of at least five percent of our renewable energy production
to balance out that intermittency pumped Hydro is a reliable long-term energy storage solution
still even though 94 of the current energy storage available comes from pumped Hydro we
can't really build those where we need them near PV power plants and wind farms forcing us to use
batteries instead right now more than 90 of the batteries used for grid storage are also lithium
ion typically lithium iron phosphate with wind and solar energy increasing by five and six percent
annually in the coming decade and EV is growing faster than ever before we have to come to terms
with a vital truth lithium and other components for lithium ion battery are hardly inexhaustible
resources while we're not exactly running out of lithium just yet there are some red flags
so much demand for this Alkali metal has sent its prices through the roof increasing more than seven
fold in the past couple of years but of course lithium isn't the only problem these batteries
require other rare elements like manganese and Cobalt which are a much lower Supply and only
available in a few countries some of which like the Democratic Republic of the Congo are weighed
down by environmental and humanitarian concerns now many companies are trying to move away from
Cobalt in their batteries but there's still some other concerns to address now when there
aren't enough resources to go around suppliers are forced to decide where to allocate their
products affecting lithium battery production with lithium batteries being so ubiquitous this has the
potential to affect all of us can you imagine what would happen if suppliers all of a sudden
decided to prioritize EVs and grid storage and we ran out of batteries for things like
iPhones and laptops however unlikely it's a scary thought we need to consider a scary thought that's
largely out of our control but online privacy and security while scary is in our control and
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is at least as energy and power dense and lithium ion so we can use it for things
like EVs and laptops but that is also made of an abundant material that is environmentally
friendly and easy to extract this is where the sodium ion battery comes in for chemists
an obvious solution to the lithium problem would be to replace it with its closest cousin sodium
like lithium sodium is an Alkali metal and shares many of the same chemical properties but with some
key differences as the sixth most abundant element on the planet sodium is more than a hundred times
more abundant than lithium in the Earth's crust we can find it virtually everywhere starting with
salt water where it's found as sodium chloride this makes sodium much cheaper than lithium and
an almost inexhaustible resource for a quick comparison mining lithium can cost anywhere
between fifteen thousand and thirty two thousand dollars per metric ton depending on the source
and as I mentioned before prices have ballooned ridiculously in the past two or three years with
lithium hydroxide increasing roughly 250 percent and lithium carbonate increasing approximately
413 percent since the beginning of 2021. according to s p Global on the other hand sodium is not only
100 times more abundant but also 100 times cheaper than lithium as mining sodium ranges between 150
and 380 dollars per metric ton this makes sodium an ideal alternative for battery manufacturing if
we can get it to work like lithium that is and that's a big if so to see if we can let's start
with how these batteries actually work as you may imagine sodium batteries work very similarly to
lithium ion batteries just like other chemical batteries they have a cathode and anode and an
electrolyte the cathode contains a sodium salt or oxide that provides the sodium ions similarly to
how in the lithium battery the cathode contains different types of lithium compounds that provide
lithium ions when we charge the battery electrons are pushed by electrical potential
difference toward the anode where the accumulating negative charge attracts the sodium ions these has
moved from the cathode to the anode through the electrolyte in the anode they fit nicely in the
little interstitial spaces between the layers of the anode material typically graphite or something
like that to draw power out of the battery we let electrons flow back to the cathode from the anode
through an external circuit or load are phones for example at the same time the sodium ions push back
to the cathode through the electrolyte now this is pretty much where the similarities between
sodium and Lithium-ion batteries end as it turns out you can't simply swap one element for another
and expect everything to work the same way for instance instead of a graphite anode sodium ion
batteries use hard carbon materials but more on that in just a little bit for the cathodes
active material lithium ion batteries use one of several oxides but transition metals like Cobalt
manganese and nickel to help increase battery life and improve energy density in the case of sodium
ion batteries there are three distinct variations in the cathode material leading to three types
of batteries name poly anion batteries Prussian Blue analogs or pbas and layered oxide batteries
poly anion batteries use metal oxide clusters with discrete molecular structures and negative charges
the robust 30 framework significantly decreases the structural stress when sodium ions go in and
out of the structure this helps improve cycle stability and safety but also lowers electric
conductivity and capacity which restricts their application the second type is known as Prussian
Blue analogs Prussian Blue is a dark blue pigment produced by the oxidation of salts containing iron
and cyanide it's known for being relatively low cost with a highly stable open three-dimensional
crystal structure which makes it ideal for Batteries since it lets ions in and out easily
the benefit of these two battery chemistries is that they largely eliminate the need for many of
the transition metals like nickel and Cobalt that are prevalent in lithium ion this doesn't just
make them cheaper but it also means there's less chance of a supply chain bottom neck when we scale
to Global Production something we absolutely need to do if we want to get rid of fossil fuels but
there's a trade-off because these materials have low Atomic packing densities so they have fewer
sodium ions per unit volume meaning you guessed it lower energy density finally there are the layered
oxide batteries these are much more similar in structure to standard Lithium-ion batteries and
are the most studied type of sodium ion battery the key difference though is that instead of
nickel Cobalt and manganese oxides which are in a shorter Supply than even lithium these sodium
batteries use iron and magnesium oxide which are far more abundant as a consequence the
sodium cathode which makes up about 44 percent of the total battery cost is much cheaper to produce
and is much more widely available than the lithium cathode for Radeon the company that seemingly gave
birth to the sodium ion battery claims their current in development layered oxide battery
will be 25 to 30 percent cheaper than lithium iron phosphate batteries at scale but if they're cheap
and work like lithium ion why don't we see lithium ion batteries everywhere what's the
hold up there's plenty to unpack here you see costs and Supply chains aren't the only things
we need to look at the first thing to consider is performance this is where sodium batteries start
losing ground to lithium the biggest problem is that capacity depends on how many sodium ions
you can pack in the cathodes and anodes Crystal structures but sodium ions are much bulkier than
lithium ions and so they take up more space this implies that in most Crystal structures there
will be fewer sodium ions per unit volume than in similar lithium compounds therefore sodium
batteries tend to have lower energy densities or energy per unit volume furthermore sodium ions
are over three times heavier than lithium ions so sodium batteries also tend to have lower specific
energy densities than lithium ion batteries do for example at the time of this video for
Radeon claims to have developed a layered oxide sodium ion battery cell that can achieve energy
densities of around 160 to 170 Watt hours per kilogram while this Falls in lithium ions range
of 100 to 265 Watt hours per kilogram it's still on the lower end of the spectrum on the other hand
the company also says that it's in the process of developing a battery that can reach up to 200 watt
hours per kilogram to reach those higher numbers though the battery chemistry would need to be
at least 50 percent nickel this reintroduces one of those materials prone to supply bottlenecking
so it sort of undermines the whole point of the sodium ion battery in the first place then there
is the issue of scaling sodium ion hasn't been around for as long as lithium ion and as a result
has received far less attention investment and r d however for Radeon was recently bought by a major
Indian Solar Company called Reliance Industries which has said they plan to scale up sodium
on battery production over the next two years hopefully producing between 10 and 20 gigawatt
hours by 2024. this is a major win for for Radeon and its Battery tech but the biggest promise for
sodium is that the largest battery manufacturer in the world Chinese Behemoth contemporary amperex
technology limited or catl got in on the game in 2021 when they announced the launch of a 160 watt
hour per kilogram sodium ion battery they also claimed to have a second generation battery in
the works that can reach upwards of 200 watt hours per kilogram contrary to variety on solution which
is a layered oxide battery CHL is building a PBA battery with Prussian white an inexpensive easy
to produce material that can maintain 95 capacity after 10 000 Cycles this is an order of magnitude
Improvement in battery life over lithium the best part is that this battery will only rely on Earth
abundant materials meaning it could scale for decades without ever hitting a bottleneck now
if you remember earlier in the video I mentioned how sodium ion batteries use hard carbon anodes
hard carbon are forms of carbon that can't be turned into graphite they can be made from
dozens of materials but currently there isn't a robust supply chain for manufacturing hard
carbon anodes fortunately catl is a big company and it developed its own material which enables
abundant storage given the battery's performance and life cycles similar to graphite because of
these features catl says that their battery will be 40 to 50 percent cheaper than lithium ion
aiming at a long-term cost of around 40 dollars per kilowatt hour less even than lithium-ion
phosphate batteries that are currently around 80 to 100 dollars per kilowatt hour as far as
scaling catl says they will use the same equipment already used to build their Lithium-ion batteries
still the company doesn't expect to have their supply chain in place until at least 2023 meaning
it could still be another five years before they reach large-scale commercial operation
so to summarize sodium ion batteries are cheaper to produce and use fewer hard to find materials
depending on the particular chemistry but their energy densities are on the lower end of lithium
ion but not that different plus it will take at least five to seven years for the industry to
begin catching up to lithium ion so it's safe to say that we won't see them storing solar energy or
powering your EV anytime soon at least for a few years but even if their performance can't compete
with the best Lithium-ion batteries that doesn't mean they're not valuable considering the amount
of energy storage needed to replace fossil fuels we'll need every energy storage technology we can
get our hands on not just sodium ion batteries perhaps in the future lithium ion batteries will
be reserved for those applications where only the highest possible energy densities can be used I'm
not even talking about electric cars I'm talking about electric planes and helicopters on the other
hand sodium ion will likely benefit applications where energy density and small size aren't as
important like grid storage which is exactly where I think sodium ion batteries will first
revolutionize the game we need to start developing competitive Battery Technology now to begin taking
some of the strain off of our current battery material how great would it be to not have to
just have one Battery Technology eating at 90 of the market but a robust competitive battery
marketplace with dozens of Technologies filling up the landscape sounds like a win-win to me so
I think the future of sodium on batteries is vitally important and yes they are still
decades away from where lithium ion is today but with just how much of a game changer they are and
how affordable they're going to be I think you're going to see tons and tons of investment over the
next 10 years in sodium ion battery research but what do you think do the sodium ion batteries cost
in material benefits outweigh their lower energy density would you be willing to buy the same Tesla
for 20 less money in exchange for a slightly lower range but longer battery life sound off
in the comments below all right that is a look at sodium ion batteries I think they're going to be a
really big game changer I'm gonna try to reach out some companies that are doing the research
like for addion or even catl maybe do an on-site episode in the future so stay tuned for that but
in the future check out this video next I'm Ray YouTuber Da Vinci we'll catch you guys next week