Sodium ion battery introduction

At the beginning of July 2017, a "sodium battery company AquionEnergy bankruptcy is a disaster caused by lithium batteries? The article, the sodium ion battery has been pushed into the people's field of vision. It is not difficult to find that the research and development of sodium-ion batteries has entered a period of intensiveness in the past six months. Although it has not yet entered commercialization, sodium-ion batteries have undoubtedly become a "up-and-coming star" under the prosperous life of lithium batteries.

At present, the battery is mainly used in the fields of electric vehicles, energy storage and consumer electronics. Especially in recent years, the rapid development of electric vehicles and energy storage industries, the demand for batteries, especially lithium-ion batteries, is increasing, and lithium-ion batteries are gradually exposed. Some of its limitations: First, the problem of insufficient lithium resources; second, the problem of resource recycling. The emergence of these practical problems has forced enterprises and industries to choose a battery system with more abundant reserves and cheaper materials. In the constant search, the sodium ion battery system has received increasing attention from the industry.

Professor Kyeongjae Cho, a major in materials technology and engineering at the Eric Johnson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas, said: "Lithium is expensive and has limited mineral resources. There are only a few lithium mines in the world. But sodium does not exist in minerals. Insufficient problems can be extracted from seawater."

Xiong Xunhui, an associate professor at the School of Environment and Energy, South China University of Technology, said that the working principle of sodium-ion batteries is similar to that of lithium-ion batteries, which use ions to achieve charge and discharge between the positive and negative electrodes. However, the former is rich in sodium resources and lower in cost, and because of its high voltage platform, the safety is higher.

Finding the right electrode material has always been the key to the development of sodium ion batteries.

Recently, the negative electrode material of sodium ion battery has made a breakthrough. Xiong Xunhui and Liu Meilin, a professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have been continuously researching and developing a mixture of commercial strontium sulfide and graphene oxide and sodium solution, and then preparing modified graphene and nanometer strontium sulfide by controlled crystallization and sintering composite material. The half-cell assembled from the material and the sodium sheet has a capacity retention rate of 83% after 900 cycles of rapid charge and discharge (completed in charge and discharge for about 40 minutes).

It is understood that the composite material has a good cycle performance, making the sodium ion battery application a big step.

In addition to the anode material, the cathode material is also an important battlefield for sodium ion batteries.

Recently, with the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the researchers of the research group of the National Key Laboratory of Molecular Nanostructures and Nanotechnology, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guo Yuguo, researchers, through material dynamics theory calculations and experiments, breakthrough The limitation of single metal ion positive electrode, combined with the advantages of various metal ions, obtains O3-NaFe0.45Co0.5Mg0.05O2 cathode material with excellent comprehensive performance.

It is understood that the method significantly improves the structural stability and capacity retention of the material exposed to air or even immersed in water, reduces the storage cost of the material, promotes its practical application, and designs a high performance sodium ion battery cathode material for the future. Material structure optimization provides guidance.

Positive and negative materials continue to come from Jiaxun, so where will the future target market for sodium-ion batteries be?

Hu Yongsheng, a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that in the future, sodium-ion batteries can gradually replace lead-acid batteries, which are widely used in various low-speed electric vehicles and complement lithium-ion batteries.

At present, most electric bicycles, electric tricycles and even old scooters in China use lead-acid batteries. However, due to imperfect recycling channels and systems of lead-acid batteries, environmental pollution is more serious. Although lithium batteries can replace lead-acid batteries, the problem of lithium resource reserves and the lower cost of sodium-ion batteries have allowed Hu Yongsheng to target the target market of sodium-ion batteries to the low-speed electric vehicle market. He also said that in the future, sodium-ion batteries will also shine in energy storage.

With the development and research of sodium-ion batteries, many companies have begun to arrange sodium-ion batteries and sodium storage energy, and Chaowei Group is one of them.

At the beginning of 2017, Chaowei Group and General Electric Company (“GE”) held a signing ceremony for the joint venture project of Durathon sodium salt battery in Changxing, Zhejiang. The two sides combined their respective industries and technological advantages to jointly establish a joint venture company to expand the application field of sodium salt batteries. After years of research and development, Durathon sodium salt battery technology has been commercialized. It has the characteristics of stable product properties, high safety (no burning or explosion), high energy density and long service life. At present, GE has built energy storage projects such as solar energy, wind power combination, peak management, and communication base stations in 25 countries around the world.

In addition to Chaowei Group, Zhongju Battery Research Institute of Zhongju Battery released the world's first sodium ion battery energy storage system prototype in 2015. It laid the foundation for the industrialization of domestic energy storage sodium ion batteries.

Although it takes time for sodium-ion batteries to be mass-produced, many companies and research units are continuing to develop. At the same time, sodium ion battery applications are also facing a problem. Although the cost is lower, the energy density of sodium is 20% lower than that of lithium. If there is no breakthrough in this area, its application will also be limited.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.