> What is the size of the battery? Could it be installed in a cell phone, an electric bicycle, a cordless drill, a car, a house?

I think you're missing the point of the article, it's describing a specific way to arrange the cell electrodes so that the sodium/sulfur chemistry actually functions - the technology could be used to make any size battery once it's commercialized.

The battery in your mobile phone and the hornsdale power reserve (ie a state/province scale battery) have almost the same chemistry, so asking about the size of a battery made with a particular process as if they had any relation with each other is kinda redundant.

> How far away from manufacture is it?

Heh that's a tough one - there's been so many of these sort of papers that have made big claims then faded into obscurity with nothing ever actually coming of it, and so little information from large scale manufacturers about specifically which papers' techniques they're using that the commercialization pipeline is very opaque.

> Are there any estimates of its cost?

Well sodium and sulfur are much easier to find than lithium, and lithium's cost is skyrocketing while the cost of lithium batteries is falling and they're gonna meet in the middle at some point.

I'm more concerned about the apparently critical role of molybdenum in this paper, since it's rather rarer than lithium - but perhaps someone can work out how to get a similar advantage from more common materials now that they know what to search for?

Also: what is the max Energy you can pull out of it without hurting longevity?

Hi, I work at a startup focusing on lithium sulfur batteries. It’s a slightly different chemistry and I can’t say how far this particular tech is from the market, but I have some insight.

The standard practice in testing new battery tech is to make coin cells that look very similar to what you’d buy in a store. The article also mentions pouch cells which are a similar size but aren’t rigid, which causes them to behave differently because pressure doesn’t build up. Once you prove tech can work at this scale, then you start engineering a bigger battery. The idea is that eventually it could power anything, but obviously cars would be a main focus.

The cool thing about sulfur batteries is that sulfur is literally trash. The fossil fuel industry has been making mountainsof it for decades. They practically pay you to take it. That’s important because the most expensive part of lithium ion batteries is currently the cathode, which requires the use of cobalt and manganese, both of which are very expensive and require lots of ecological damage to mine. If we can figure out the tech, these batteries could be dramatically cheaper, and also store enough energy to give an electric vehicle enough range that EVs could outcompete combustion engine cars.

I'd imagine if it says 4x the capacity, then it should mean that it's more energy dense given the same size. But yeah all your other questions are fair

>Dr Zhao’s Na-S battery has been specifically designed to provide a high-performing solution for large renewable energy storage systems, such as electrical grids, while significantly reducing operational costs.

Presumably that means that this is more national infrastructure level than mobile phone level, which will make things like renwable energy more viable. Or at least that is what they are aiming for right now.

Its certainly possible that they could produce something more mobile phone friendly in future and they are going big now because that is the area in most desperate need, I just don't know what the fundamental limits of this technology are, I hope they can go smaller as it woupd be great if we became less dependent on Lithium