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In this video we will be having a look at the possible future of battery technology, sodium-ion batteries. Unlike lithium batteries, the material of sodium batteries is much easier to find and thus cheaper and more environmental friendly. I was finally able to find some on AliExpress. Now the question is whether those are real and how they compare to more traditional lithium batteries. Let's find out!
Websites that were used/shown during the video:
https://hakadibattery.com/collections/sodium-ion-battery-cells-3v
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0592/3694/2029/files/HKD_18650-1300mAh-20C.pdf?v=1703754781
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.0c02181#
https://www.akkuteile.de/lithium-ionen-akkus/18650?facets=82
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5ce5vDCG1uyZFlNa1hHdmFyYWs/view?resourcekey=0-cLOIGS2Opu5Ubc3oydOxbw
Thanks to JLCPCB for sponsoring this video.
Visit https://jlcpcb.com to get professional PCBs for low prices.
0:00 Salt Batteries?
1:40 Intro
2:41 Is Sodium-Ion Real??
3:10 Charge/Discharge Curve
5:13 Pros/Cons of Charge/Discharge Curve
6:25 Energy Density of Sodium-Ion
7:37 How to Charge them?
8:27 Battery Management System?
8:59 Maximum Input/Output Power?
10:10 Safety?
10:59 Cycle Life?
11:30 Verdict
Now these two batteries here look about the
same, right? But while they both can provide portable energy
for your laptop, vacuum cleaner or for example cordless power tool; their inner composition
it totally different. You see this one is made up of lithium and
this one is made up of sodium. And yes; this is very exciting because while
lithium is a scarce resource that is also quite pricey, sodium is not rare and thus
also a lot cheaper. I mean normal table salt aka sodium chloride
is made up of
around 40% sodium. And for months now I have seen videos on YouTube
talking about that such Salt batteries aka Sodium-ion ones will be the future of battery
technology; but no one actually tested a real one yet. So I was very excited to find these cells
for sale on AliExpress and I know what you're thinking; But no, they are not fake. And in this video I will show you exactly
why I think they are real and more importantly do a bunch tests in order to ultimately tell
you whether you should from
now on, only use these salt batteries instead of common lithium-ion
ones. Let's get started! Today's video is sponsored by JLCPCB, my long
time choice for fast and reliable PCB services and just recently they launched their highly
anticipated multi-colour silkscreen PCBs. By using them, you can for example add your
own picture to your colourful PCB with the help of Pro EasyEDA which is JLCPCBs more
professional EDA edition with more powerful features and functions. And after the design process y
ou can like
always order your PCBs which will not only be of high quality, but also very affordable. So join their Facebook group today for an
exclusive multi-colour coupon and be among the first to try out this new feature. Now first off when looking at these two batteries,
there is obviously no way to tell whether this one is really sodium based. One possible way to find that out though is
of course cutting it open and looking inside. But because I tried the exact same thing in
a previous vide
o and had no idea what I was looking at because I am not a chemist; we
should probably instead focus on an electrical method. One of them is called charge/discharge curve
meaning we charge and discharge the battery while monitoring its voltage and flowing current. So let's do just that starting with the lithium
battery by firstly adding tabs to its plus and minus pole and then checking its datasheet
to find out how it wants to get treated. And it seems like its standard charge is 1.25A
up to a v
oltage of 4.2V and for the discharge we can do a maximum of 20A down to 2.5V; but
I wanted to keep it low and thus settled for 2.5A.
With that in mind I set up my Battery Tester, hooked up the battery, adjusted the current
and voltage values in the software and began with the charging process which after around
2 hours gave me this curve. So next it was discharge curve time; which
after around 1 hour looked like this and if we put them side by side then we can see a
very typical lithium based cu
rve which not only applies to such lithium-ion cells, but
also LiPo ones and big Lithium Iron Phosphate ones. So next let's compare it to the supposedly
sodium ion batteries for which I also hooked one up to the battery tester and set its charging
voltage and current to 4V and 1.3A just like the datasheet recommends it and its discharge
current to 2.6A down to this time 1.8V. And after once again waiting for a few hours,
I was greeted with these curves here which without a doubt look quite a bit
different
than the lithium-ion ones and do correspond with sodium-ion curves you can find in scientific
reports which is enough prove for me. But which curve is now better, you might ask? Well, the main big difference is that the
lithium battery comes with a narrower voltage plateau where the battery spits out its energy
which is around 4V to 3.4V. The sodium one on the other hand has a wider
one between 3.9V and around 2.1V This has the advantage that you can more easily
determine how much cha
rge is left in your battery, while lithium based ones often have
to keep track of how much current goes in and out of the battery to determine its State
of Charge. But then again when you got a load that needs
a constant power, then its is definitely easier to work with a more stable voltage because
then the current also stays around the same. With a more decreasing voltage though, the
current has to constantly rise to get the same output power and thus your power electronics
have to be designed
this way which can be a bit more expensive. So yeah, both curves have their pros and cons;
but what is a definite disadvantage is that while both batteries come with the same size,
the sodium one can only deliver around 4.06Wh of energy while the lithium one can do 8.7Wh
which is more than double. Of course when digging a bit online you can
find sodium cells with slightly higher capacity, but certainly not as high as lithium based
batteries at the same size. And that directly brings me to the e
nergy
density comparison for which I checked the volume, weight and price of one sodium-ion
cell and added those information to my battery comparison chart. And as you can see sodium-ion can only barely
rival lithium iron phosphate when it comes to energy density while being quite a bit
more expensive. But I bet that will soon change due to the
low price of the material and is currently only so high because it is a new technology
that is not quite in mass production yet. And speaking of new tech
nology; there also
do not exist dedicated charging ICs for sodium-Ion batteries yet which are definitely mandatory
though because of the different charging voltage. But the good news is that with an ordinary
LM317 adjustable voltage regulator, you can pretty easily build up a crude constant voltage
constant current charger according to the schematic given in its datasheet. With this resistor value we should get a maximum
of 1.3A and with this resistor voltage divider an output voltage of 4V whic
h according to
my tests was all pretty close and thus suitable for my sodium-ion battery. And if you want to put multiple cells in series
in order to form a powerful battery pack, then you also need a Battery Management System
aka BMS to keep each individual cell safe from overcharge and over discharge which now
also needs to work with other voltage levels. But thankfully there appears to already exist
a commercial version. So yeah, new technology obviously comes with
some challenges; but for no
w let's switch back to our raw cells here and the very important
question how fast we can charge them up and discharge them. Now when looking in the datasheets then we
can easily figure out that the max values are way bigger for the lithium based battery. To prove this, I powered up my new battery tester which can measure
the internal DC resistance of a battery, by basically comparing how much
its voltage drops when more and more current flows. After doing this test with both batteries
you can
see that the sodium one features a 33% higher internal resistance, meaning that
due to its chemical structure it produces more heat when more current flows. That obviously limits its input and output
power capabilities; but while that sounds bad those values are still very close to those
of lithium iron phosphate batteries and you know, those get used as energy storages for
houses and also in electric cars. But while this chemistry does not allow for
maximum power, it certainly improves the safe
ty aspect. I mean when looking up lithium-ion videos
on YouTube, then there are plenty where fire and explosions are involved including my own
one from almost 10 years ago. But when browsing through
the sodium-ion datasheet, then you can always read that no fire or explosion took place which I know would definitely be
interesting to test on my own. But honestly speaking I was a bit too scared
to do that. So instead I recommend you to watch this video
which summarized, ended with the cells flyin
g around but not creating an explosion or fire. And last but not least we got the topic of
cycle life meaning how often I can discharge and charge up the battery before it is losing
capacity. And according to the datasheet the sodium
battery does 1000 cycles while maintaining 85% of its capacity, while the lithium battery
only comes with 60% after 250 cycles which is a huge difference. And with that being said, I think we discovered
the most important advantages and disadvantages when it comes t
o this new battery technology. So do I think we should now all replace all
of our lithium-ion batteries? Well, definitely not because
I feel like sodium-ion is electrically more similar to lithium iron phosphate and I hope to see it sooner or later
become its replacement so that we finally can have a more environmental friendly battery. So time to play the waiting game; but while
doing that, feel free to check out some of my other videos or my Patreon in order to
keep this show going. As always
don't forget to like, share, subscribe
and hit the notification bell. Stay creative and I will see you next time.
Comments
Small correction that was not clear in the video. I said that the discharge/charge curve for Li-Ion, LiPo and LFP (LiFePo4) is about the same. That is not completely true since LFP or LiFePo4 comes with lower voltage levels. But their voltage does also not drop that much. It is pretty flat across the whole discharge region. This is what I was trying to say.
"That's assault!" "No, it's battery."
Nice to see a new battery tech video not filling with fluff and marketing hype. Just the numbers and graphs... This is what we want! Simple information well presented without the guff... Well done.
So many bots on your video unfortunately. Reported them all, hope it helps
Home battery storage will be awesome for these since size isn't a big concern, same for businesses. Like if a Tesla Powerwall was twice as big for the same capacity but 25% cheaper and you know it's made using cleaner materials which we'll never run out of, and ideally not* gathered by workers in unreasonable conditions, then yeah I'd choose that version of the power wall for sure! Hopefully they start coming to market within a couple of years. Sodium should hopefully be able to be mined for cheap in enough quantities in USA and EU too within having to rely on imports.
I think these have A LOT of potential. But everyone has been waiting for the "revolutionary new battery technology" and that likely isn't going to happen. We will likely rely on a wide range of technologies for different use cases that will prevent over-reliance on certain materials. Like lithium (Good vid!)
I was just watching a video, I think from Big Clive, where he put a schottky diode in series with a lipo during charging with a standard lipo charger, and the 0.3V drop kept the battery <4V when the charge completed. Potentially a quick and easy solution for charging the sodium cells, assuming the charging current is the same, and the charger can handle recovering from a low voltage starting state.
Nice to see sodium batterers leaving the lab and making it to production. This will be a game changer in home and grid storage where space isn't always an issue but cost and lifespan is.
Sounds great for large static installations like houses. Maybe not so great for power tools and high performance applications.
I really appreciate this video, but I do want to give a minor correction. You mentioned in the beginning how no channels were doing sodium ion testing but Off-Grid Garage has a fantastic series where he put these batteries through the ringer and put up a ton of data on them. I highly recommend checking him out if you get the chance!
Also another thing to remember is that the max capacity of sodium-ion batteries will likely increase in the future like what happened with lithium-ion batteries.
i replaced the battery in my offgrid cabin with prismatic sodium ion cells already, works great. i used a JK-BMS and just configured it for the parameters of the sodium ion cells. comes with the great advantage of being able to charge in low temps as low as -10°C which lifepo4 can't do, but still it's as safe as lifepo4. i just used a random buck/boost module to boost the voltage if it drops too low for the consumers
Love seeing battery evolve. The lithium ones are good but it feels like you are handling a tnt every time you work with them😂. Btw good video!
I put together a sodium ion power tool battery. The voltage drops a lot while running (internal resistance). For a car tire pump it's not too bad because it works at a lower temperature, so I can leave it sitting in my car in the winter. It's definitely a lot larger (physically) battery than the li-ion equivalent. I don't plan on making any more power tool batteries out of sodium ion. I'm thinking of making an off-grid solar panel system for my garage specifically to charge an electric car, and as an emergency (extension cord) backup for the house. With the lower temperature capability and a lower price than LFP, and longer cycle life than Li-Ion, I plan on using sodium for this project.
Andy @Off-Grid Garage has been doing some significant testing of sodium batteries (not cells so much). The wider voltage range and sinking discharge curve compared to the nearly flat curve of LiFePO4 is rather a problem until/unless off grid electronics is designed for the wider voltage range.
Nice! When calculating the W/$ should really consider also the life of the battery. Natron Energy's bluepack claims 50-100K cycles so if you buy 100Kw lithium for home storage you will need to replace it every 5-10 years while with sodium probably you will never need to replace it.
I think what i love most is the safety, this might just be a very good battery for DIY projects. No longer feeling like holding a grenade fearing it will blow up and light your house on fire when connecting the wires :D
My capstone project was on this exact subject. I really like how you laid out the information for your video! Battery advancements are going crazy these days.
Great video! You missed temperature as well. For outdoor installations (weather stations, solar powered meshtastic, etc) sodium batteries can be charged and discharged down to -20c, whereas lithium does not like to be charged much below 0c and has issues with discharge when cold as well.
gotta point out I love how you neatly draw stuff on printed graphs etc in the video instead of just showing us a slide show or something. Its a nice touch and adds to the experience