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New sodium-ion battery skips mechanical cooling with 97.9% efficiency
(interestingengineering.com)
Is this the next big thing? Na. /j
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
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Maybe they will make a potassium battery, K?
Maybe, but I want to see Uranium batteries go mainstream, how 'bout U?
Id prefer francium batteries, fr
Or gallium hydride? GaH.
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Sodium-Ion is already in production at CATL. Been for about half a year if I recall. It's slightly less dense than LFP but it's cheaper and promises to get cheaper yet.
You're right, they were making a pun about sodium's chemical symbol.
Not who you replied to, but thanks for explaining! I saw the /j but still didn't get it. I wasn't a good chemistry student...
The advantage of Sodium -Ion is that it's cheap, abundant, safe, and can cycle. It's mainly used where large capacities are needed. So industrial, grid scale, stationary types of storage.
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but it's cheaper
and way less dangerous.
And loads of charge cycles IIRC.
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I've been doing some looking into sodium ion batteries for the last couple of months and it sounds like it's going to drastically reduce the price of batteries and sodium ion is more thermally stable and can handle cold temperatures of negative 40 and can handle hot temperatures.
I'm also hearing charge cycle counts around 10,000, which would be something like 20 years worth of battery usage.
The current downside is power density and even that is not terrible as it's pretty close to what LFP does now and They think they can improve it more in the future.
Sodium ion is already being used in some mass market cars that don't need an incredible range, but need to be economical.
Heck, if energy density is an issue the use this initially for grid storage, home solar, etc. where a larger size isn’t a huge deal. That would increase existing lithium ion supplies for EVs.
Any info about energy density?
According to Wikipedia:
Looks like power to weight it much higher, while energy per volume and energy per mass is comparable to existing lithium ion batteries.
idk about that, the regularly cited reason Na-ion batteries are mainly being looked at for grid storage rather than vehicle applications is their bad Wh/l and W/kg numbers compared to Li-ion. the table in the Na-ion article seems to use "1000W/kg" without a source, and it shows lithium as being about a third of that even though the Li-ion article quotes figures up to 10kW/kg.
seems the editors of the two articles aren't cross-checking eachother.
The "1000W/kg" figure appears to be from Wikipedia, which claims https://www.idtechex.com/en/research-article/sodium-ion-batteries-will-diversify-the-energy-storage-industry/30405 as a source. Wikipedia has the information in a table flagged as "Needs update".
Anyway, most of the lithium-ion chemistry variations drop off relatively fast in capacity over repeated charge cycles (the exception being LiFePo4). If the sodium-ion chemistry is better that way, and drops off less in the cold, it's still worth exploring for vehicle use even if the energy density is a little lower.
In colder climates, the lower density could be offset by better performance in cold. This is why sodium has made it to large mining trucks.
from other comments it seems the energy density of batteries currently on the market is about 2/3rds that of lithium cells.
there's also the asymmetry to worry about: with a max discharge rate of 8C but a charge rate of 3C there could potentially be limits on regen braking. if i'm understanding it correctly, sodium cells degrade quickly at higher charge rates.
Googling says 175 whr/kg for catls sodium car battery that's already in production cars vs 270 whr/kg for Tesla's lithium.
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I think they are testing Unigrid battery model 72173207 (terrible name). That is their 210Ah NCO prismatic cells.
I found this spec sheet. No definitive metrics, but someone else could do the napkin math.
72173207 (terrible name)
That's my daughter's name. It was my great grandmother's name.
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CATL's that went into mass prod sometime ago are 175Wh/kg.
The 210Ah sodium-ion cells deliver up to 218Ah of discharge capacity.
WTF does that mean?
Either AI slop, someone fucked up the math for the capacity, or they’ve broken thermodynamics and are pulling power out of the ether.
First is most likely, 3rd is the coolest.
If only my other electronics operated at 104% efficiency.
It's the world's worst ZPM
Badly written, i suspect the cells are speecified to have about 210ah and a real test showed 218ah capacity. That would be pretty normal since you always have manufacturing tolerances. But i think in a good article they would have worded it better if thats the case since not all of these batterys will do 218ah.
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Wow, an actual innovation and not just growthfroth.
Yeah batteries have been one of the main areas where the real technological advances have been happening in the past decade. That and photovoltaics
Commercialize it? Oh this one could be real
Its already way past its "real" point. Just hasnt really made it to Europe fully. China is already mass producing them for everything.
Can we just skip to solid state batteries please?
No one can figure out how to make them without costing a fortune.
To be fair, solid state batteries went from being a pipe dream, to being only possible in perfect laboratory settings, to the current state of very real and possible -just expensive. And it has done all of this in about a decade. Just give it time.
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The article says that they contain NaCrO₂. That means that, by mass, they are 21% Na, 49% Cr, and 30% O. So I'm curious: why are they called sodium batteries, and not chromium batteries?
Presumably because Na+ ions are the active charge carriers.
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according to their product page, the charge rate for a single cell seems to max out at 3C, which could be a pretty big obstacle to grid-scale deployment. unless that's a problem that can be fixed with a different arrangement; i'm not too up on how to build batteries.
I assume 3C is a 20 minute charge?
1 C is defined relative to 1 hour for full discharge and 3 C means a 3x faster discharge rate (full capacity can safely be discharged in 1/3 hour, or you can discharge 3 cells sequentially in an hour). Good lithium cells tend to be above 5C, can reach 10C for peak load or if cooled.
For a large enough battery it doesn't really matter, but for dense portable ones a lower C rating means you have to discharge from more cells simultaneously to maintain a given output. That makes it more complicated, and you have less headroom to the battery's maximum Watt output if you need to accelerate a car hard suddenly.
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Kind of, yes. But more importantly, it also means it can only push enough power to run at 3c. And that's probably not for the full charge of the battery.
So a 100 amp hour battery rated at 3c can push out 300 amps. Which also means that if the grid needs a short spike in power, it might be limited.
It shouldn't be too hard to get a 15c LiPo battery, which could push 5x as much energy at peak demand.
You'd probably kill the battery if you charged it from 0-100 at 15c, but for short bursts of charging and discharging, it should handle it just fine.
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This wouldn't be an obstacle for grid, only for mobile/moving applications.
which could be a pretty big obstacle to grid-scale deployment.
Well, on a grid scale if you've got a 100MWh battery and you want to charge it at 3C, then you're looking to find a spare 300MW out on the grid somewhere for 20 minutes.
That's not impossible, but you'll buy that 100MWh a lot cheaper if you're willing to get it over the course of a few hours. For example, buying power in the middle of the day when there's excess solar, to then drop it back into the grid in a one hour burst during peak times in the evening for 10 times the price.
That kind of thing is where the battery will make the most profit, so slow charge rates don't really matter.
i think the big issue is asymmetry. they charge at 3C, but they discharge at 8C. so you need the significantly overbuild.
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