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Home - Energy Storage Knowledge - Sodium ion battery vs lithium ion – comparing which is better?
Electrochemical energy storage is the process of energy storage, release and management completed by batteries. Its working principle is energy storage technology and measures that store electrical energy through media or equipment and release it when needed.
According to the technical route, electrochemical energy storage can usually be divided into various secondary battery energy storage such as lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries, flow cell batteries, lead-acid batteries, and cutting-edge technologies. This article will mainly explain different energy storage technologies through sodium ion battery vs lithium ion.
Lithium-ion batteries are currently the most widely used new energy storage technology. Its typical technical characteristics are: high energy density, mostly between 140 Wh/kg and 220 Wh/kg, and cycle times of 2,000 to 10,000 times. Energy conversion the efficiency is about 85%-90%, and the response speed is fast, usually at the millisecond level.
Lithium-ion batteries usually consist of positive electrodes, negative electrodes, electrolytes, separators, and related auxiliary materials. Among them, electrode materials and electrolytes are key links that affect the performance of lithium-ion batteries. According to different cathode materials, lithium-ion batteries can be mainly divided into lithium iron phosphate batteries, nickel-cobalt-manganese ternary lithium batteries, lithium cobalt oxide batteries, and lithium manganate batteries. Different technical routes are suitable for different fields, mainly including consumer batteries, power batteries and energy storage batteries.
First of all, sodium-ion batteries are very similar to lithium batteries in principle, that is, charging and discharging are performed by utilizing the round-trip migration of Na+ between the positive and negative electrodes. During battery charging, Na+ comes out of the positive electrode, passes through the separator through the electrolyte and is embedded in the negative electrode, so that the positive electrode is in a sodium-poor state of high potential, and the negative electrode is in a sodium-rich state of low potential. The discharge process is opposite.
Lithium resources are still relatively scarce globally, but sodium is not scarce. So when the price of lithium carbonate is rising and the price of lithium battery is also rising, sodium battery reappears in the industry’s vision. Substituting cheap sodium for lithium will create a sodium battery that is slightly inferior in performance, but cheaper and more cost-effective overall. This is the original intention of sodium batteries being re-emphasized.
But now as the price of lithium carbonate falls, the prices of other materials in the industry chain have also fallen sharply. Now the price of power lithium iron phosphate batteries has fallen below 0.5 yuan/WH, with the latest price being 0.47 yuan/WH, while the current price of sodium battery cells is about 0.67 yuan/WH. In such a comparison, the cost-effective advantage of sodium ions is gone. When comparing sodium batteries and lithium batteries at the same level, lithium batteries are still better.
Since sodium-ion batteries can use aluminum foil as the negative electrode current collector, the same aluminum tabs can be used for the positive and negative electrode sheets, and related processes such as tab welding can be simplified. Therefore, the existing battery assembly production line for lithium-ion batteries can be used to produce sodium-ion batteries with slight modifications and parameter adjustments. The replacement cost of developing sodium-ion batteries is very low.
Although the research and development and mass production of sodium electricity are currently progressing in an orderly manner. However, due to the current sharp decline in the price of lithium carbonate, the cost of sodium electricity does not have a significant advantage in the short term, which has delayed the progress of large-scale commercialization of sodium electricity to a certain extent.
Since the performance of sodium batteries is worse than that of lithium batteries (at the same level), sodium batteries are not currently used in mid- to high-end vehicles because there is a gap between them in energy density and charging rate compared to lithium batteries.
At present, the main application fields of sodium batteries include two-wheeled vehicles, A00-class cars, and energy storage. And for a long time, sodium batteries will basically only be used in these three fields.
Energy storage batteries are generally lithium iron phosphate batteries, and competition is fierce. Energy storage batteries compete on price, so it is not easy for sodium batteries to enter the energy storage market. In particular, large-scale energy storage has requirements for the number of cycles, generally more than 6,000 times. But now the number of cycles of sodium batteries is actually only 2000-3000 times. Calculated in this way, even if the price of sodium batteries is lower, it will be difficult to enter the gridscale energy storage market.
The energy storage market is a relatively professional market, and large-scale energy storage is dominated by enterprises. These enterprises will test battery performance and comprehensively consider price and cycle life. Therefore, if sodium batteries want to get a share of energy storage batteries, they must be technologically innovative.
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Given the limited supply and high price of battery-grade lithium and other advanced battery materials, alternative battery chemistries are being researched. Some avenues, such as sodium-ion batteries, are yielding the first tangible results. Sodium-ion batteries are one of the most developed technologies today and have the potential to become a viable option in many battery applications in the near future.
The initial commercial success of sodium-ion batteries indicates a potential for substantial growth in this segment. However, new battery technology requires years of engineering for successful commercialization, and with the accelerating demand, there remains a risk of battery shortages in the mid-term future.
CATL, one of the world''s biggest lithium battery manufacturers based in Ningde, China, is launching commercial-scale manufacturing of sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries to be used in passenger EVs. This may indicate the early market adoption and growth potential for sodium-ion chemistry, replacing lithium-ion (Li-ion) in some battery applications.
In this article, we compare the two technologies'' various parameters and contemplate the feasibility of using sodium-ion batteries in industrial machinery, such as material handling equipment and other applications.
The natural abundance of sodium (Na), the Earth''s fifth most abundant element constituting 3% of its mass, is remarkably higher than that of lithium (Li), signifying its potential significance in battery production. The concentration of sodium in the Earth''s crust is about 1,180 times greater than that of lithium, and in the sea, it is an astonishing 60,000 times higher. These stark differences in availability are presented in Table 1:
One significant advantage lies in the cost of sodium. A simple comparison of prices on the Shanghai Metals Market reveals a striking 20-fold difference in prices of pure sodium and lithium compounds (June 2023):
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The current demand for sodium within the battery industry is negligible, especially in contrast to the surging demand for lithium in Li-ion battery packs. The year 2022 marked a notable milestone for lithium-ion batteries, as the prices of battery packs increased for the first time in 12 years since BloombergNEF (BNEF) began tracking prices. The price reached $151 per kWh, largely due to the soaring demand for batteries driven by the electrification of passenger electric vehicles (EVs), as well as electrical industrial equipment and energy storage manufacturing.
Similar to lithium-ion cells, sodium-ion battery cells have positive and negative electrodes, a separator and an electrolyte. Both battery types are based on the "rocking chair" principle: During the charging and discharging processes, positive ions travel back and forth between the two electrodes of the battery, as shown in Fig. 1.
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