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I read the article. I need a lot more details. 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? What are the drawbacks, if any? How far away from manufacture is it? Are there any estimates of its cost? Guys, you've given us almost nothing.

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

Yeah. Basically, there are no details at all. GIVE!

thats a VERY strong claim. needs way more than the level of we found wet in rain

I know they put a film between graphite-lithium to extend the performance. But no details

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

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> 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?

50% capacity loss after 1000 cycles, requires Mo, which is only about 30% cheaper per kg than Li. 2/3rds of the theoretical energy density of sodium sulfur. Lots of engineering learning required to go from research to viability, and no strong record at University of Sydney for continuous process improvement or technology transfer to industry -- although I have not dealt with this school or group before and they might certainly be better. Not overly exciting as a candidate unless they show more.

Per dollar? Per kilogram?

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I think the size here refers to energy density.

But then they go on to say

>> Could it be installed in a cell phone, an electric bicycle, a cordless drill, a car, a house?

which indicates they're thinking of a physical size, as if the chemistry dictates a fixed size somehow - hence why I pointed out that mobile phones and grid-scale storage can both use the same chemistry, so the question as stated doesn't make much sense

It goes both ways. Of course you can put various battery technologies into cell phones, technically, but having a 500g cell phone with 4h of autonomy doesn't make sense nowadays.

There's always news about breakthroughs in batteries but I'm still waiting for them to go into mainstream devices

okay but how unstable is the chemistry

So sodium-sulphur but better. More details needed.

This weeks the battery industry is about yo be disrupted

What is the capacity density ie charge vs size. That's the only thing important

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I've been hearing the same story for more than 5 years

Usually Metal-Sulphur Batteries have a rapid capacity fading due to sulphide dissolution. This was not adressed in the article and I cant be bothered to read the paper because stuff like that is usually so far away from industrial scale that it will be irrelevant by the time its ready.

I remember 20-30 years ago, people were screaming for better/cheaper data storage options, and there was a news report every week about a new "Harddisk" made from crystals, metals, sellotape, unobtanium, wood or cow poop that was supposed to store a bazillion exabytes per square inch.

These days everyone wants bigger/better/cheaper batteries, and there is a news article every week about a new battery chemistry made from crystals, metals, sellotape, unobtanium, wood or cow poop.

Progress can only happen when people try out stuff. But hailing every little thing that worked in the lab (and got blown out of proportion by universities and instituions eager for PR and journalists eager for clicks) as the new game-changer is really, really tiring. Show me that something can be made, practically and economically, at scale. At which point I don't NEED a news article since the thing will be available in stores.

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I'm sure that I read something similar to this a few months ago.. maybe was that Lithium - Sulphur.

Other articles refer to these new batteries made from as being larger, more sized for uses where a larger form factor isn't an issue. Appropriate for buildings. Can be recharged many times faster and many more times than lithium based batteries without fire risks.

We're going to be having these batteries for our homes instead of generators shortly.

>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

This is literally a new version of an existing technology tho. It's not really the same as whatever cow poop (likely onion too, right?) Thing you are talking about.

Cool! My weekly battery tech that I’ll never see post!

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.

What do you do that requires you to "deal" with Universities?

Neighbour, this is a science sub. Many of us attended universities or have worked at them or with them.

Yep, basically the same article gets written a couple of times a year. The revolutionary new battery technology never materialises.

So, what do you do?

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> and no strong record at University of Sydney for continuous process improvement or technology transfer to industry

What does this mean? Seems a strange and broad brush to tar a university with. In my experience, they are quite diverse school to school, faculty to faculty, with varying levels of competence and experience in industry engagement.

From grad students and postdocs working on their research, up to tech companies that give support to university research labs.

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I'm going into battery tech as a mechanical engineer and I also keep seeing novel new chemistries show up all over the place with people fawning over it being the next big thing. I saw the same thing with some vanadium redox flow battery, and obviously the fine print was that it was a redox flow battery, and was only really suitable for maybe large scale power grid batteries.

I think the truth is probably just that we need to use whatever a) works decently b) has useful properties (durability, stability, form factor, cheap to produce etc.) And c) we have a lot of. There are tons of metals that are theoretically (or more recently, practically) decent for battery technologies if you can squeeze multiple ionization states out of them, it's just a matter of implementation

The "problem" is li-ion technology ....for example i found a graph 2008 to 2020 of energy density increase from 55Wh/l to 450Wh/l.....basically every new battery development is eaten up by efficiency increases with the known chemical structure....also cost decrease has been massive as well....how to compete?

Things like this keep being claimed... But the reality is that we know all of the elements available to us. And we know which of these elements in concert with one another can store energy to convert to electricity. The problem is that those elements alone are unstable, so others must be added for stability. We have already minimized those extra elements. There may be some margin to be gained, but we are close to peak energy density possible. Everyone of course hopes that there will be another breakthrough similar to what we saw between NIMH to Li tech because it would be amazing for EV's... That hope makes people believe claims like we see here. There are some experts that have acknowledged that our battery tech has mostly peaked.

https://www.bmwblog.com/2022/12/06/bmw-engineer-lithium-ion-battery-tech-may-have-peaked/

Enovix seems to be the leader in breakthrough battery technology that should be consumer electronics very soon.

because its need to be so much massivly better to displace the current technology. everything that use battery tech would need get be retooled production facily's need to be build to build the new battery ect mining company's need start looking for these metals.

all these things take long as time to change wich shareholders dislike long term investment is getting more and more rare in the investment world everything needs to be a quick win everything need to grow in exceptional rate wich causes stagnation in loads of things

The production of molybdenum is only 300kt/a, which is really not much. If we would start using it in batteries on large scale the price would skyrocket eliminating the price advantage.

Ford had a sodium-sulfur battery in the 1970s. It's a very attractive chemistry, but requires high temperatures and even this new approach doesn't provide the life expectancy needed. 1000 cycles in a renewable grid is 3-4 years.

I have been watching battery tech since the batteries dies on my game boy. This is always the story. Some crazy new tech is announced, and never heard from again, because it's not commercially viable compared to what we already have, or to get it to market to begin with.

Edit to add: This is not to say we shouldn't be researching this stuff, just saying to temper expectations.

Yeah but we've had massive breakthroughs in solid state storage since then. I remember 16 mb usb drives. Now I have a 1 tb USB 3.0 that was dirt cheap.

50% loss is still 2x current capacity

>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.

This doesn't sound like it's meant for consumer devices.

Even if you restrict consideration to the same type of storage, we have improved them.

Pretty wild way to squeeze a bit more density out of it!

So after 5 years of charging it has double the capacity of lithium ion.

That is double the capacity of a li-ion in 5 years when the li-ion is brand new.

Usually within 5 years you will have replaced your phone or the battery.

Got it.

So are you telling me we overthrew Bolivia's government for nothing?

Could be per volume too.

Cycle life is usually more important than capacity.

There's actually quite a big element for scalability of the battery cell size, as intelligent controlling charges of multiple different cells is often how many different high power battery installations work. In fact the word battery itself is a reflection of the inherent multiple quantities of power cells arranged in a group or battery.

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And when something does come to market, it happens gradually enough that we as consumers don't really notice. Batteries gave gotten better over time, but devices have also gotten more power hungry so it's a balanced curve. Imagine how long a game boy would last on a modern cell phone battery

Maybe is the battery is limited to o it use the middle 80% of capacity, it won’t degrade nearly as much, like Tesla batteries

I'm with you, SemanticTri has different expectations that seem unreasonable

Phones are not the only use for rechargeable batteries. Cars? Hornsdale?

I'm sure someone complained about the viability of lithium batteries, too. It's the nature of invention, right? Lots of trial and error. Eventually you get a decent process and product. And then it gets replaced.

It would be nice to see some technology that utilizes a metal that's more abundant and cheaper than lithium. So I guess they keep experimenting.

Yeah, I think that was the initial one, regarding density.

Well yeah, I think I remember that happening actually, and at the time they were correct: a lot of work had to go into lithium batteries to get them to the commercially viable state that they're at today. I'm glad that work was done, and that people were excited about it, but I am slightly concerned about the broader trend of the public/journalists not being able to simultaneously a) be excited and b) understand that even a big breakthrough is more than nothing but less than everything.

Also I'm actually gonna be working on that exact technology and I'm extremely excited about it!!

Your game boy batteries were probably nickel cadmium. That technology took a long time to charge, had a low energy density, and relied on toxic cadmium. The technology has improved quite a bit since then.

Good or bad, a lot of the discussion around new battery technology is about electric vehicles, and that much degradation is a non starter for an EV. I assume that's 50% degradation even with thermal management, which is way worse than any modern EV, and basically as bad as the most abused Gen 1 Leaf.

Most modern EVs expect at most a 20% degradation within 10 years (US law requires manufacturers to provide an 8 year/100k mile warranty in the battery). While double capacity sounds nice, it wouldn't be for cars. As is now, you just could not put this into a car, it would degreade faster than the warranty, so you'd be replacing under warranty constantly (financial suicide), or if you got the warranty requirements changes, they would like reduce the battery size (same range, lower weight), and then you have the problems with the Leaf on everything.

That said, new battery technologies are good. 5 years is probably fine for a phone (assuming they don't reduce battery sizes to compensate, which is not guaranteed), or for industrial application (size your needed battery for the 50% reduction, and you'll just have more capacity before it degrades.

It reminds me of another that was posted either here or to r/electricvehicles, which was a battery with almost no degradation, but power density was really low. It would be a decent option for a power wall, but again awful for an EV due to the weight issues.

I was thinking more in terms of a phone when I wrote that. Great news for phones, not so much with EV

No need to imagine! I've installed some Gameboy battery mods. They last a long while!

This one claims 30 hours.

https://handheldlegend.com/products/cleanjuice-dmg-xl-rechargeable-battery-mod

Sodium sulfur batteries aren't anything new. The main issue with them is they need to be kept at like 300 degrees Celsius to work. This article is claiming a working sodium battery at room temperature.

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dude, 30 years ago my Macintosh had...wait for it... a zero gigabyte hard drive. zero! you booted from a floppy disk ffs. Hard Disks have gotten massively bigger since zero. . I credit the cow poop.

If you take the 4x capacity, lets say take a 300 mile current battery, now you have 1200 mile range. If we take 1000 cycles at 50% capacity it is 600,000 miles, way more than the vast majority of cars last, and you still have a 600 mile range. 1000 cycles is a lot and barely any battery goes through 1000 cycles in consumer use.

EDIT: With the 100k mile warranty you are barely reaching 100 full charge cycles so if we assume linear degradation the battery has degraded by just around 5%, which would be reasonable amount for any current EV to degrade within 100k miles.

Hey, we've got people buzzing about cold fusion again. They've been talking about that since I was a kid in the 80's.

Once again, 42 is the answer.

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No need for batteries when there is an extension cord. I cycle to work everyday with my chord attached to my Ebike. The future is bright.

In addition, 1000 cycles is a LOT. I think even the heavy users would struggle to use 1000 cycles of for example 200kWh (4x a reasonable amount of 50kW) within the usable lifetime of all the other parts of the vehicle. With consumption of 0.3kWh/mile you would need to drive over 600k miles to have the battery degrade to "just" 100kWh, which still means 300 mile range.

How are the electrodes encased? At a high temperature around 300 Celsius, one of these car battery sized babies would be a massive explosion if cracked/exposed/disrupted.

I know cost is a major factor for consumers but could batteries not be the new glass or aluminum? If we built out recycling systems as time goes on, a quick battery change (even for an EV) wouldn't be that bad if the tradeoff is the end of fossil fuels in transportation.

Of course that's if the material can be recycled safely instead of it being a consumable with no value post-consumer.

What tools/metrics are you using to assess tech transfer to industry? Also, how are you assessing continuous improvement within the academic environment?

For people who don't know, this is Hornsdale:

https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/

Exactly. Toss this on the pile of hundreds of the exact same article written in the past decade or so.

Yeah, but for real this time!

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Energy density is okay, but for grid storage, you need materials that can be mined without causing more problems than CO2.

All those $100 five terabyte drives were once lab curiosities.

Damn, you can buy 20To drives nowadays?

I mean they were probably alkaline