Sodium Ion // CATL and Faradion // Managing Expectations

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Another great one. I'm going to have to keep this in my pocket whenever Reddit Armchair generals post about how Sodium is going to just up-end everything and somehow that'll destroy Tesla which to them is a 'good' thing.

👍︎︎ 12 👤︎︎ u/IAmInTheBasement 📅︎︎ Jun 22 2022 đź—«︎ replies

Very good video, and the reality really is, how will tesla scale at 50% per year if the global supply chain of lithium batteries can only scale at 25% per year?

Even if tesla has ALL of the supply chain, they wont be able to scale at 50% per year without alternatives

👍︎︎ 9 👤︎︎ u/Weary-Depth-1118 📅︎︎ Jun 22 2022 đź—«︎ replies

The Limiting Factor is always a huge treasure trove. Everyone should listen to this channel.

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/greystone-yellowhous 📅︎︎ Jun 22 2022 đź—«︎ replies
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Welcome back everyone! I’m Jordan Giesige and this is The Limiting Factor. In 2021 CATL launched their sodium ion battery technology. Many people took this to mean that we’d soon see sodium ion batteries hitting the market in a meaningful way. But, is that the case? Will we see sodium ion battery cells in a big way before 2025? For me, the answer to that question is a clear no. I do expect that to change as the decade rolls on and there are some caveats attached to that view, but it begs the question: Why don’t I expect extreme scaling of sodium ion batteries in the next few years given that sodium is so much cheaper than lithium, so much more widely available than lithium, and given that CATL is getting in the sodium ion game? CATL has more proven capability of scaling battery cell production than any other battery cell manufacturer in the world. This video will tackle those specific questions and I won’t get too deep into the technical aspects of sodium ion batteries. In the next few months, I will make one or two companion videos to this one to get deeper into the cost and technical details of a sodium ion chemistries. However, I viewed this video as a priority because so many people are viewing sodium ion as the Deus ex Machina solution to any materials bottleneck we might see with lithium ion in the next few years. As we’ll see, that’s unlikely. It’s more likely that the position sodium ion will fill this decade is to compliment lithium ion battery cell production and shore up the total number of GWhs produced, rather than being an immediate and all dominating force that supplants lithium ion battery cell production. Before we begin, a special thanks to my Patreon supporters and YouTube members. This is the support that gives me the freedom to avoid chasing the algorithm and sponsors. As always, the links for support are in the description. First, what’s the basic argument for sodium ion batteries? It all stems from the assumption that because sodium is over 100x more abundant in the earth’s crust than lithium, it will solve all issues related to cost and scalability. Let’s dig in and test that assumption starting with a basic understanding of the technical challenges of sodium ion batteries. At a high level, how do sodium ion battery cells differ from lithium ion battery cells? In a lithium ion battery cell, the cathode, shown here on the right, contains lithium. To charge the battery cell, electricity is applied to push lithium ions, to the anode. To discharge the battery cell, an electrical pathway is opened between the anode and cathode. When that happens, the electrons push their way back to the cathode. The lithium ions follow suit and make their way back to the cathode. With a sodium ion battery cell, conceptually, it’s the same principle. The lithium is just replaced with sodium. However, although conceptually it’s simple, in practice it’s a monumental challenge. A battery cell is a complex dynamic system spanning six orders of magnitude that juggles matter and energy like a living organism. The difference between a sodium ion battery cell and a lithium ion battery cell is about as different as the biology between haemoglobin and chlorophyll. I use this analogy because the haemoglobin in the red blood cells that runs through our veins and the chlorophyll that makes the leaves of a tree green have nearly identical chemical structure. The main difference is that haemoglobin has iron at its core and chlorophyll has magnesium at its core. This helps to explain why, although lithium ion batteries have been commercialized for around 30 years, we still don’t have a sodium ion battery that’s proven to be commercially viable at large scale. One does not simply swap lithium for sodium. It changes the dynamics of the entire electrochemical system due to different voltage potentials, molar masses, and ionic radii. With that said, we are getting close to commercially viable sodium ion battery cells. Faradion introduced the first sodium ion battery system in 2015, which seemed to trigger a Cambrian explosion of sodium ion batteries and investment. It’s just a matter of time before one or several of these companies succeeds. Let’s get a bit more technical. As I explained earlier, lithium batteries use a lithium based cathode. However, despite being lithium based, the cathode is only 7% lithium. The rest of the cathode can use a variety of different elements such as iron phosphate and nickel oxide to meet the needs of different use cases. If you want to know more about that, check out my LFP science video. The same is true of sodium ion battery cells. Sodium ion includes a variety of sub-chemistries that, like lithium ion, can be predominately iron, nickel, manganese, or cobalt. That is, the metals used in Sodium ion batteries will, for the most part, be the same metals used in lithium ion batteries, they’ll just be doped with sodium instead of lithium. This means that many of the same bottlenecks that apply to lithium ion batteries apply to sodium ion batteries. One of the main bottlenecks for lithium ion batteries is Nickel, which is currently the only option for a truly long range electric vehicle. Just like with lithium ion battery cells, sodium ion battery cells that use Nickel in the cathode can have higher gravimetric energy densities compared to those that don’t use Nickel in the cathode. For example: Faradion is currently shipping Sodium Ion battery cells that achieve 160 – 170 Wh/kg at low volume and they expect to achieve 200 Wh/kg soon. That’s on par with the lithium iron phosphate battery cells currently being used in Tesla standard range vehicles. But, to hit those figures they need to use a large helping of Nickel. Faradion’s chemistry is at least 50% Nickel at the cathode level. So, although I hold Faradion’s technology and their team in high regard, from a scaling perspective, my view is that Faradion’s sodium ion chemistry has less global scaling potential on the open market than Lithium Iron Phosphate based batteries. This is because the limiting factor for lithium iron phosphate scaling is expected to be lithium, which is an order of magnitude more abundant than Nickel. That is, using nickel in a sodium ion battery cell seems counterproductive, because as I said earlier, the whole point of sodium ion is to reduce cost and increase scalability by using a material that’s more abundant. Faradion’s chemistry seems to trade the lithium bottleneck for an even worse Nickel bottleneck. Let’s play that out with the table on screen. Lithium is 10x more abundant in the earth’s crust than Nickel. Another way to view that is that Nickel is 10x as scarce. Next, factor in a 50% Nickel cathode for Faradion’s sodium Nickel Cathode vs the 7% lithium content in a lithium cathode. To make things fair, we have to take into account that industries that are already quite large tend to be easier to scale further. The nickel industry is about 25x the size of the lithium industry. If we multiply scarcity by the amount of cathode material needed, then divide by a scaling adjustment, it looks like a Sodium Nickel chemistry would be more than twice as difficult to scale. I’d like to emphasize here that I made this table to provide a bare bones conceptual framework to compare the scaling challenges of Sodium Nickel vs Lithium Iron cathodes from only one perspective: The raw materials bottleneck I expect for each chemistry based on the current situation on the ground today. It doesn’t take into account the other raw materials needed for the battery cells which would make sodium ion look more attractive. But it also doesn’t take into account the size of the lithium ion battery industry, which would make lithium ion more attractive because lithium ion is working off a larger base. As for cost, sodium ion battery cells would be 0-50% be cheaper than lithium iron phosphate battery cells, depending on who you’re asking. By Faradion’s estimate, 25-30% cheaper at scale. Let’s call it 28% for brevity. Given all the other complexities of the battery market, is that 28% cost advantage a market dominating advantage? My view is no, for two reasons: First, that 28% cost advantage is only achievable when the scale of sodium ion battery cells reaches a manufacturing scale comparable to lithium ion battery cells. The current scale of the lithium ion battery cell market is about 700 GWhs per year, and that took 30 years. Plus, the lithium ion battery market will continue to grow, on average, about 25% per year over the next decade, so it’s a moving target. That is, although sodium ion has a first principles advantage in cost because sodium is cheap and abundant, it’s fighting against the mammoth scale of the lithium ion battery industry. So, even if sodium ion scales relatively quickly, lithium iron phosphate battery cells will continue be cheaper for the next few years and cost competitive for many years after that. Second, if cost is the primary consideration, then CATL will likely be the king of sodium ion, not Faradion, because CATL’s chemistry will be more like 40-50% cheaper than lithium iron phosphate versus Faradion’s 28% cheaper. But before we get to CATL, there are a few more notes on Faradion. First, many will bring up the fact that Faradion was purchased by the Indian Conglomerate Reliance Industries and they plan on scaling the technology. The idea here being that I’m wrong about the potential of Faradion’s technology because they’ve been purchased and intend to scale. But, that’s why I was careful with my wording earlier in the video. I said that my view is that Faradion’s sodium ion chemistry has less global scaling potential on the open market than Lithium Iron Phosphate based batteries. Reliance Industries intends to use Faradion Battery cells in India for their own projects. There aren’t any product announcements yet that I’m aware of, but Reliance is a solar power company and I’m assuming we’ll first see these batteries used as back up for their solar farms. Faradion’s teasing an initial capacity of 10 to 20 GWhs by 2024 for their first battery cell factory in India. It’s certainly possible for them to build 10-20 GWhs of production capacity in 2 years, but the question is: How long will it take them to scale that capacity with a battery chemistry that’s never been scaled before? On screen is what Panasonic’s ramp looked like at Giga Nevada, and Panasonic is an experienced cell manufacturer. So, I think the odds are that it will take Faradion and Reliance at least 1 year and probably more like 2 years to hit a production rate of 10-20 GWhs and that’s if everything goes fairly smoothly. If that’s correct, it will be 2025 to 2026 before they hit 10-20 GWhs of actual production. Bear in mind that they not only have to build the battery cell factory, they need to build the supply chain that feeds that battery cell factory. The cell factory is only about 20% of the supply chain. By 2025 to 2026, total global production of lithium ion battery cells could be anywhere between 1 to 2 Terawatt hours. So, Faradion will be supplying about 1% of the world’s battery supply if all goes well. That’s a good chunk of capacity for one company in India, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what lithium ion will be doing in 2025 to 2026. This all begs the question: Why would Reliance invest in a sodium ion chemistry that may not have global scaling potential due to its high Nickel content rather than buying LFP battery cells on the open market? I’m going to offer my own speculation here: Tesla announced on Battery Day that they were taking control of their own destiny by moving battery cell production in house. I think the strategy of Reliance is similar. By using Faradion’s technology, Reliance can scale at will with in house cell production. As I said earlier, in order for Sodium ion to realise the lower cost potential of sodium ion technology, sodium ion batteries need to achieve a scale similar to lithium ion batteries. However, there’s a loophole. As the image on screen shows, LFP batteries from China have about a 20% premium built in due to shipping fees and tariffs, and another 10% for profit. Any battery cells imported into India would have expenses like these tacked on. If Faradion manufactures their own battery cells in house, by default, they’ll cut the cost of those battery cells by around 20%. For example, if the cost of first generation sodium ion cells on the open market and at low volume was $100 per kWh, they could produce those cells in house for $80 per kWh, which is what LFP battery cells would have cost them. Furthermore, if Reliance only scales in India and for their own projects and doesn’t plan to scale globally, the Nickel bottleneck expected throughout the decade may not become an issue. So, why not build battery cell production in house for a price similar to LFP with the potential in the long run for cost to be quite a bit cheaper than LFP? That is, in the specific case of Reliance, Sodium Ion could be a great option because it works for the scale, use cases, and market that Reliance finds itself in. But, that’s my opinion. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Now that we understand some of the basics of sodium ion, let’s move on to CATL’s plans for sodium ion. As I showed with this image earlier, the energy density and materials cost of sodium ion chemistries varies dramatically. Faradion targeted layered oxides using Nickel, which are high energy density but come with the downsides you’d expect from a Nickel chemistry. CATL, on the other hand, is targeting PBAs, or Prussian Blue Analogues. Prussian Blue Analogues are chemicals that have a similar crystal structure to the chemical Prussian Blue, which is a dark blue pigment produced by the oxidation of salts that contain iron and cyanide. CATL said they’re using a Prussian White cathode, but that’s still classed as a Prussian Blue Analogue. Unlike the layered oxide cathodes that Faradion is targeting, CATL’s Prussian White cathode won’t use Nickel. Instead, it will likely rely on iron and/or manganese for the bulk of the cathode mass. That is, every material that will go into CATL’s sodium ion batteries will be exceedingly abundant. So CATL is picking a chemistry that will be able to scale without restraint for several decades. In fact, it may never hit a bottleneck. CATL claims that their first generation sodium ion batteries will have an energy density of 160 wh/kg. However, there’s a reason why CATL focused on the gravimetric energy density, which is energy density for a given mass expressed in wh/kg. Sodium ion batteries can have gravimetric energy densities nearly as good as lithium iron phosphate batteries, but their volumetric energy density, expressed in Wh/l, tends to be much lower. As this calculation by Matt Lacey indicates, the volumetric energy density of a sodium ion battery cell will be roughly a third less than the energy density of an LFP chemistry. So CATL’s battery cells will be poorly suited to cars because the range would be a maximum of about 180 miles, or 290 kilometres, for a vehicle the size of a Tesla Model 3. However, although CATL’s sodium ion battery will have low energy density, it’ll have the benefit of long cycle life because Prussian Blue Analogues typically have very robust crystal structures. Sodium Ion battery cells should have a cycle life comparable to LFP batteries, which last for thousands of cycles. This will make sodium ion battery cells perfect for energy storage where more cycles means a greater return per dollar of capital invested and where energy density for space and weight is a minor concern. CATL’s advised that their first generation sodium ion battery cells will cost $77 per kilowatt hour. That’s comparable to the price of LFP battery cells before the current bought of inflation, and considerably less than the current price of LFP, which is around $100 per kilowatt hour. Based on all that, what’s the hold up? Why am I saying that we won’t see sodium ion battery cells in a big way before 2025? Why wouldn’t companies just stop producing LFP battery cells for energy storage and cut over to sodium ion battery cells that are cheaper and that have similar performance? First, it’s because the demand for batteries is insatiable. As I covered in my Tesla: Battery Material Strategies video, we’ve been ramping lithium ion battery cell production exponentially for 30 years. But, in the next 20 years, we need to increase production by about 40x the current global production to transition the world to sustainable energy. Forecasts indicate that throughout this decade maybe half of demand will be met and shortages won’t be resolved for another 15 years. That is, Lithium ion batteries will need to continue to ramp as strongly as possible, and then on top of that, we need every battery cell from every commercially viable chemistry to support the transition. So no, sodium ion batteries aren’t competition to lithium ion. The world needs to ramp both chemistries as forcefully as possible, and it still won’t be enough to meet demand. And what can we expect from a sodium ion battery cell ramp by CATL? First, in absolute terms it’s easier to ramp lithium ion battery cell production than sodium ion battery cell production because the lithium ion battery industry is already at scale. There’s a stronger skeleton of manpower, machines, methods, materials, and money to build on. We’re at the point where lithium ion is now growing at hundreds of gigawatt hours per year. Asking sodium ion to grow by 100 Gigawatt hours in a year is like asking a 10 year old to put on 50 pounds of muscle mass in a year. The skeleton and starting mass just isn’t there yet. Most Sodium ion manufacturers are at pre-pilot or pilot production scale, which also means that the supply chains to supply those lines are almost non-existent. Additionally, as I said before, the difference between a lithium ion battery and a sodium ion battery is like the difference between the biology of plants and animals. That will most certainly create new and different challenges for scaling sodium ion. For example, sodium ion cathodes are more sensitive to moisture, which will create headaches up and down the supply chain for quality control. That’s solvable, but nuance becomes headache at thousands of tonnes per year. That is, the maturity of the lithium ion industry and the lack of maturity in the sodium ion industry will be a tailwind for lithium ion battery cell production and will be a challenge for sodium ion battery cell production. Yes, most of the skills will be transferable from lithium ion to sodium ion, but knowledge and experience matters and scale matters. If you wanted to start a lithium ion battery cell factory and the supply chain that feeds that factory, you have a pool of thousands, if not tens of thousands of engineers to pull from to get things moving. This is why lithium ion battery cell factories are pushing up like dandelions. Although there is a shortage of battery engineers, there’s still a massive pool of existing talent to pull from. And it’s not just me pointing out the relevance of the supply chain. CATL’s own advice is that they hope to have a basic supply chain in place for sodium ion by 2023. A basic battery materials supply chain is almost an oxymoron because battery material supply chains at scale are complex. For example: Sodium ion battery cells use hard carbon anodes instead of graphite anodes, so they’ll need a hard carbon anode factory. Hard carbon anodes can be derived from dozens of sources, meaning at least as many potential outputs and manufacturing processes. And, contrary to some videos I’ve seen on YouTube, sodium ion cathodes just can’t use table salt, which is sodium chloride. They’ll instead use sodium carbonate, and it will need to be ultra-high purity sodium carbonate, which, like most battery grade chemicals, may require a specialized refinery. Then, that battery grade sodium will need to be processed into a cathode using a using a cathode recipe that’s never been tried before at scale, which is a science unto itself. If you’d like to know more about the challenge of creating a cathode recipe, check out my interview with Mitra Chem. CATL has a lot of talent and I’m betting they’ll kick butt and get it done, but don’t expect a basic supply chain to mean battery cell production deep into the double digit gigawatt hours of production. Do expect that basic supply chain to take a year or two to hit its nameplate capacity, whether that’s 1 gigawatt hour or 20 gigawatt hours. Even in a best case scenario, where sodium ion is able to scale fantastically and hit 100 GWh from all manufacturers combined by 2025, that’s still only about 10% of total global battery cell supply in 2025. But, in my view, in light of everything above, 100 GWh of actual battery cell production, not manufacturing capacity in 2025 is super aggressive. For example, Wood Mackenzie only expects 20 GWh of sodium ion battery cells by 2030 in their base-case scenario. Let’s stop for a moment here to appreciate the lesson that sodium ion is teaching us. Think about all the articles you’ve read about breakthroughs in battery technology. My definition of a breakthrough is something that not only makes it to production but disrupts an industry. Most battery tech hailed by the media as breakthroughs never meets those criteria. The first question you should ask about any breakthrough is: Where’s the factory? And then, can this product displace the incumbent technology in all or most use cases. But, what about the rare technologies that come along about once every five years, like CATL’s sodium ion battery cell that ticks every box from commercially useful and viable, to cost, to materials availability? With a chemistry as new and different as sodium ion, it still takes about a decade from product announcement to changing the world. Relative to lithium ion, it won’t be until after 2025 that we see sodium ion making a meaningful contribution to transitioning the world to sustainable energy. And, it won’t be until after 2030 that the sodium ion battery cell market will start taking market share from lithium ion in a big way. And, it could be maybe 2035 before it overtakes lithium ion as the dominate battery cell chemistry in terms of total GWh produced. But, that’s if everything goes well and involves quite a large number of assumptions. Namely, that companies like Tesla will embrace sodium ion immediately and whole heartedly. Lithium ion has eccentricities, but those eccentricities are well understood after 30 years. Sodium ion doesn’t have that luxury, and it certainly has its own eccentricities. I’ll cover some of those eccentricities when I eventually do a more technical companion video to this one. In summary, sodium ion batteries are a such a promising technology that they’re almost a foregone conclusion. I think they have an extraordinarily bright future based on the fact that they have a first principles advantage vs lithium ion battery cells. That is, they use cheap materials that are nearly infinitely scalable. However, it will still be steep hill to climb because manufacturing is never easy, particularly when it’s at a global to scale. In order to see sodium at massive scale by the mid-2020s we’d have to see those projects announced now or by the end of the year and lots of buzz from the companies that would be using those battery cells. So far we’re only looking at hints of a basic supply chain and 10-20 GWhs of production. And, I haven’t heard of any major manufacturers that have firm plans to use sodium ion. The focus is on lithium ion chemistries with Nickel and Iron rich Cathodes. On that note, while I was scripting this video, Drew Baglino, who’s Tesla’s Senior Vice President of Powertrain and Energy Engineering, did an interview with Stanford Energy. He commented on Sodium Ion and to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time someone within Tesla has commented publicly about sodium ion batteries. Drew said that if it’s possible to get sodium to be as compelling as lithium, then Tesla might do Sodium Ion for energy storage. This is just as I suggested above for CATL’s PBA based cathode, which has low energy density but high cycle life. Drew also said that currently, the road for batteries is lithium or bust, and it would be great to have one more entrée at the table. Again, as I suggested throughout the video, the challenge of transitioning the world to sustainable energy will require every battery cell from every chemistry that we can get our hands on. Sodium ion isn’t a replacement for lithium ion, it’s a much needed reinforcement to support Tesla’s growth. As I suggested in the Tesla: Battery Material Strategies video, scaling lithium ion at 50% per year will become increasingly difficult throughout the decade. A compelling sodium ion chemistry would increase my confidence that Tesla could continue to scale at 50% per year into the late 2020s. That is, sodium ion might just arrive in time to meet Tesla’s needs in the late 2020s. But, in order to meet those needs, that ramp has to start now because it will take a good 5 years to get the supply chain in place and work the kinks of the chemical processes used to manufacture the chemicals that go into those batteries. It’s not as simple as just building a sodium ion battery cell factory. Just like there’s a supply chain for lithium ion from lithium mine to battery line, sodium ion will need to build an entire supply chain. There will be challenges at each stage, from refining and precursors to cathode and anode production to battery cell production. As usual, I’ll keep a close eye on the battery industry and I’m excited to watch the sodium ion industry unfold. And of course, I’m slowly building up technical knowledge on sodium ion and aiming to do a more technical video in the coming months. If you enjoyed this video, please consider supporting me on Patreon with the link at the end of the video or as a YouTube member. You can find the details in the description, and I look forward to hearing from you. A special thanks to jbcarioca, Trevor Woudt, Paul G, and Christopher Lee Jones for your generous support of the channel, my YouTube members, and all the other patrons listed in the credits. I appreciate all your support, and thanks for tuning in.
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Channel: The Limiting Factor
Views: 117,563
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Keywords: The Limiting Factor, The Limiting Factor Channel, Limiting Factor, Jordan Giesige, Sodium Ion, CATL, Faradion, Managing Expectations, Sodium Batteries, CATL Sodium Ion, Faradion Sodium Ion
Id: Nqp3T-MLskw
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 28min 11sec (1691 seconds)
Published: Wed Jun 22 2022
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