Sodium Ion Batteries: Interview with Dr. Laura Lander

[Music] [Applause] [Music] batteries are a big part of the energy transition and there are a number of competing technologies out there in addition to lithium-ion the dominant one and i'm going to talk to dr laura lander who is a postdoctoral research associate in the electrochemical science and engineering group at the imperial college of london about sodium ion battery so welcome to the interview laura thank you welcome look let's start off sodium ion is not one that i'm familiar with maybe you could just give us a brief overview of what sodium ion batteries are definitely so in principle sodium ion batteries work very similar to lithium-ion batteries so you have the cathode you have the anode and the electrolyte it just in contrast to lithium-ion batteries the the chemistries are a little bit different so instead of a graphite anode which you have in lithium-ion batteries you have a hard carbon anode for example and on the cathode side also you have different transition metals for example you don't have the nickel manganese cobalt or lithium-ion phosphate chemistries which you usually have but yeah the transition metals are a bit different but the working principle is practically the same so what we're talking about is the cathode and anode are made of different materials than in a lithium-ion battery and they're they're more common uh easily found cheaper though those are the advantages um definitely so you don't need to use critical materials such as cobalt graphite or lithium in sodium ion battery so that's a huge advantage and will definitely take a lot of pressure off from those those critical materials um i'm not quite sure if i would say they're also cheaper for example you have materials such as vanadium which um also have their own disadvantages for example there might be toxic or i'm not quite sure about their cost to be honest um but for example sodium definitely has a has a big price advantage and also it's so abundant so you you can also avoid the kind of geopolitical um issues that you might have with lithium for example which is very much focused in certain areas and certain countries um now i understand that sodium ion batteries have a lower energy density than lithium ion and that i assume uh makes a difference in the kind of applications in which they're used definitely so um why energy density in lithium-ion batteries is um is extremely important for example for applications in electric vehicles sodium-ion batteries for now might not have quite reached the same level although i have i have to say i read an article the other day about foreign batteries even um over like um having a higher energy density than for example lithium-ion phosphate battery so this is highly encouraging but in terms of application i would agree i would say they're not made for evs now but they're more for applications where maybe a space is not such a problem so for example for crit storage applications or also for smaller transportation applications such as e-bikes or maybe fleets where you have only very short distances you need to to drive so it's i guess it's more niche application for for mobility but certainly a huge potential for good storage well let's talk about grid storage because i've interviewed a number of experts about about batteries on grid storage but also other um and other applications like pumped hydro and pumped air those sorts of things are we talking uh long story long duration storage or these would be a shorter duration that would compete with lithium i would say i would definitely rather be shorter duration competing with lithium-ion batteries in this regard and where are we at with this application have there been pilot projects uh are they becoming are they close to commercialization um i think i'm i have to say i'm not quite sure about the the commercialization for grid storage applications but as far as i know um the commercialization stage is rather in in a small scale area so for example we have faradian which commercializes cells rather for emobility we have we have a french company um which commercialized cylindrical sodium ion cells but tiamat i think which are also for smaller applications um there's catl which announced the commercialization of sodium ion batteries on a larger scale so hopefully when when the production is scaled up and also the the packet the battery pack packs becomes bigger we see more sodium and batteries in good storage applications but for now for now it's uh still lithium right and i would imagine that the fast charging has got to be uh an advantage at the the grid scale and i understand that they can withstand more uh discharge cycles as well yeah definitely sodium batteries have a have a longer um a longer life lifetime than and lithium-ion batteries which makes them highly advantageous but i think still there's a lot of things to understand about sodium ion batteries because obviously you have a huge lag in fundamental research on sodium-ion batteries so even though they have been discovered a very long time ago i think approximately around the time lithium-ion batteries have been first researched on they had kind of a there was a big hole where the research focus was mostly on lithium-ion batteries and so therefore sodium ion is a bit behind um so i think there's a lot of as i said fundamental chemistry to be understood and especially like when you talk about interface reactions at the at the um cathode and anode with the electrolyte um and to optimize those um those battery systems i think you can still push the battery lifetimes further just on that point maybe for our non-technical audience laura i was interviewing an expert a few years ago and he pointed out that you know the science of electrochemistry on a significant scale is really only 40 maybe 50 years old and so a lot of these chemistries uh yeah there's still a lot of a great deal of research to be done absolutely absolutely and i think also especially when we talk about batteries and sodium amp batteries which are new technology um each chemistry interferes differently with the electrolyte and depending on how you use it and yeah and each each reaction can have such a big impact on the battery performance so it's really crucial that you go into the into the fundamentals of a battery chemistry to understand what's going on and also how to mitigate the problems and to optimize the battery system now with the scale up of battery manufacturing we've seen a lot of investments announced recently in europe uh the north america is playing catch-up but then president biden for instance has prioritized a domestic battery manufacturing sector but china seems to be well ahead and are they leaders in sodium ion as well um i would say for now they haven't been i think it was much more uh european venture i would say with floradion uh i would say being one of the first to to commercialize sodium-ion batteries but i think they will clutch they certainly will catch up on the trend and i think also for them i mean even though they have quite a um quite a monopoly on the lithium and and other battery materials also for them obviously they want to stay ahead of the game and they have to they have the means to to produce sodium ion batteries on a large scale quickly because in fact the advantage also sodium and batteries is that um the manufacturing process is practically the same as for lithium-ion batteries so you can just implementing the sodium and battery manufacturing in the already existing manufacturing um or the production line so it's a really easy transition and so china is a big advantage also here so just the last question on the the electrochemistry uh given all of the applications that are going to be involved in the electrification of the economy are we going to see many many electrochemistries that fit you know niche applications where their cost or their safety or you know their other advantages that they have as opposed to you know one big technology like lithium ion that dominates everything i would say so and i think that would be um there would be a very good development because obviously now the pressure on lithium-ion batteries is so high um in terms of critical materials for example and cost um it makes it rather risky to to put all our all our how would you say in english all our cards on this uh on this technology and um so yeah definitely the energy storage technologies will diversify research is also done on for example multivitamin batteries where we have calcium manganese sodium magnesium and aluminum ion batteries which also might fit into into niche applications and um yeah so we'll definitely see more more technologies coming this um given that the range of applications is so so large there is no one technology one fit for for all so i guess in the future we definitely see more but safety is a is a bit of an issue and i understand this isn't your primary research focus but perhaps you could address it a little bit and that you know so we've seen lately we've seen uh stories about lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles that catch on fire we've i think i saw one the other day about perhaps a was in a utility scale application in australia where one of the battery packs caught on fire uh but i understand that sodium ion is less vulnerable non-flammable so therefore more safe yes um from from what i understand sodium ion batteries have a higher um yeah higher resilience to to temperature effects they they don't show any thermal runaway reactions so then it makes them makes them safer for applications especially in a large scale could you explain briefly what thermal runaway is please sure from a runaway reaction means that when you um when you overuse your your battery or if there are certain um yeah certain usage conditions where your cell is starting to overheat you kick off you kick off a chain of reactions um over like going from one cell and propagating through throughout the whole pack where you have the the thumb run away which means um your battery pack will catch fire at some point probably always explode well let's talk about uh critical minerals this has been in the news lately uh particularly over the sixth last six to twelve months with the expansion of battery manufacturing capacity everyone's asking well where are the minerals going to come from for this and could you give us an idea oh and of course we should mention that the raw lithium as uh i saw recently has tripled in price so what advantages does sodium ion batteries have when it comes to critical minerals um they don't use them so this is the huge advantage um [Music] so in critical materials critical minerals we have in lithium-ion batteries with the cobalt uh we have lithium on the anode side we have the graphite and um obviously with the hugely increased with a huge increase in battery demand the pressure on those minerals will be will be significant and this is also a big risk in turn as you mentioned already a cost risk for battery production and for the battery price and also the geopolitical tensions that might um that might be related to this and and the dependency on on other countries who have the monopoly on on those minerals so having an alternative battery chemistry which doesn't use those minerals for certain applications like large scale grid storage applications or transport niche applications um will be a huge advantage so in um in sodium and batteries on the anode side you replace the graphite with hard carbon just because sodium does not intercalate into graphite as in the same manner lithium would and on the on the cathode side you um you have rather transition metals such as vanadium titanium manganese so you cannot avoid all the cobalt the cobalt related chemistries and obviously no lithium so uh given that the sodium ion batteries are still under development what are the top one maybe two challenge technical challenges that need to be overcome oh so i think challenge still is the the lower energy density which needs to be overcome um obviously as i mentioned before um sodium and batteries have a well they certainly naturally have a lower energy density compared to lithium just because of the nature of the chemistry but i think through more engineering solutions and more technical developments and also maybe more or newer battery chemistries in in the sodium ion battery field the energy density certain will still be pushed and might maybe not reach the same level as some current lithium-ion battery nmc chemistries but definitely will be higher than what we see now let's talk about scale because that seems to be a big issue in terms of uh bringing down cost and also a technical challenge and i've interviewed other uh experts who have talked about how you know clever engineering clever factory design is really helping with scaling up and things like dry coating of anodes that sort of thing what about what makes sodium ion batteries uh so scalable i wouldn't i wouldn't be sure how they would be more scalable than lithium-ion batteries to be honest um what i would just say is that the that the manufacturing process is practically the same which um you can already take the all the knowledge we know uh all the knowledge we have from lithium-ion batteries and then transfer it to sodium ion batteries great and uh who are the players in the space now you've mentioned a few uh varadian out of uh out of europe and uh catl uh which is the big chinese player and has recently announced maybe we could talk about catl because they made a recent announcement they're going into beginning commercial manufacturing um can you give us an overview of what they're up to so obviously they've been or from what i've read they have been quite secretive about the battery chemistries as many of the um of the manufacturers but um yeah definitely they announced the commercialization of sodium-ion batteries on a large scale i think up there they want to secure the supply chain up to 2023 i think this is around the time they want to to bring the batteries on the market and obviously this is amazing this is yeah it's very promising also for um to see that new battery technologies have a real um a real impact in the real application uh in the current market and it's not only about lithium-ion batteries now um in the piece that i read about catl it mentioned that you know they were developing their supply chain uh prior to their launching commercially and is it an advantage that they're already in lithium-ion manufa battery manufacturing that supply chains are quite similar um i would think the supply chains are slightly different because the the minerals would come from different places than the ones you use for lithium-ion batteries [Music] but yeah i think the the logistics already there the manufacturing plants are already there so i think they will have an advantage in terms of uh in terms of production compared to for example europe are there are there any other firms working on sodium ion batteries that have unique or innovative chemistries or other advantages for their technologies so we have in france we have tiamat who who commercialized a few years ago cylindrical sodium ion batteries um and i think they use the sodium vanadium fluorophosphate chemistry if they remember correctly and then we have a ferrari on which you already mentioned with the layered battery chemistry and yeah i'm i'm actually very curious to know what the catl would use in their batteries but not sure if they will tell us anytime soon uh are we aware of any companies in north america that are uh working on these or maybe japan and and korea they're also working on sodium ion i have to say i'm not quite i haven't heard anything about any commercialized batteries from either from korea japan or the us to be quite honest great laura thank you very much has been very interesting and we'll be watching the sodium ion batteries face with a great interest see what catl brings to market next year definitely i'm very curious too thank you very much for the interview you

Channel: ACCURE Battery Intelligence

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Id: dlEMvrZ3ZkE

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 29 2021