The Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has detailed a technology advance in Sodium Ion battery technology that, if replicated, could overcome one of the major hurdles limiting mass adoption of electric vehicles, that being a slow charge rates for depleted batteries.
A breakthrough capable of decreasing battery recharge times, to less than a minute, would make battery charging stations every bit as timely as petroleum fuel pumps, completely offsetting pushback that limits the use of EV for longer haul trips.
https://news.kaist.ac.kr/newsen/html/news/?mode=V&mng_no=36310
Almost simultaneously, researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University have, reportedly, advanced the conductivity by a factor of 10X over current sodium ion battery technology, via the use of sodium polysulfides as the base material and flux.
The combination of cheap sodium and cheap sulphur with a glass electrolyte is designed for solid-state batteries. Results are published in Energy Storage Materials under the title “Utilizing reactive polysulfides flux Na2S for the synthesis of sulfide solid electrolytes for all-solid-state sodium batteries.”
The line of these research inquiries demonstrate a very large runway for sodium-ion batteries, as compared to lithium ion. One of the key issues with any lithium ion battery is that it cannot be run to a point of zero charge, whereas a sodium ion battery can be run to full exhaustion. This practical limitation of lithium ion charge capacity is completely overlooked, but the inability to run an Li battery to exhaustion results in a perpetual overstatement of lithium ion battery capacity, by a minimum of 20%.
The potential of sodium ion batteries to be run to the point of exhaustion, to be fully recharged in the same time-frame consumers now enjoy with fuel pumps at gas stations, with dramatically increased conductivity, by multiples beyond current rates, will, if commercialized, move sodium ion from a far more cost effective alternative but featuring lower energy storage, to a vastly superior alternative over lithium ion on every front.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/04/240411130248.htm
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