Sodium-ion battery

Sodium-ion battery is one of the latest additions to rechargeable batteries. Main advantage is that the raw materials are abundant and easily available on Earth, compared to lithium which is a rare and difficult to extract metal. The picture from Wikipedia shown here shows two sodium-ion batteries of the type 18650. You may be familiar with this number in lithium-ion batteries which I had posted some time back. The number refers to its size: 18 mm in diameter and 65 mm in length. The “0” at the end indicates it is of cylindrical shape.

This image illustrates various candidate materials for cathode, anode, electrolyte, separators and binders for sodium-ion batteries, from a 2017 Chemical Society Reviews journal article [1]. Sodium-ion batteries have an operating temperature range of −20 °C to 60 °C. Efficiency can be up to 92% and self-discharge negligible compared to lead-acid batteries. Energy density is significantly higher than lead-acid batteries. They are heavier than lithium iron phosphate batteries for a given energy storage capacity, but lighter than lead-acid batteries.

Reference

1. J. Hwang, S. Myung and Y. Sun, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2017, 46, 3529 DOI: 10.1039/C6CS00776G