DoomsdaysCW<p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/SodiumBatteries" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SodiumBatteries</span></a> offer an alternative to tricky <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/lithium" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>lithium</span></a></p><p>Lithium is relatively scarce and mostly refined in China. Sodium is neither</p><p>Oct 26th 2023</p><p>Excerpt: "Fortunately, lithium is not the only game in town. As we report this week, a clutch of firms are making batteries based on sodium, lithium’s elemental cousin. Since sodium’s chemical properties are very similar to those of lithium, it too makes for good batteries. And sodium, which is found in the salt in seawater, is thousands of times more abundant on Earth than lithium and cheaper to get at. Most of the companies using sodium to make batteries today are also Chinese. But pursuing the technology in the West might be a surer route to energy security than relying heavily on lithium. </p><p>"Besides its abundance, sodium has other advantages. The best lithium batteries use <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/cobalt" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>cobalt</span></a> and 3nickel in their electrodes. Nickel, like lithium, is in short supply. <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Mining" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Mining</span></a> it on land is <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/environmentally" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>environmentally</span></a> destructive. Proposals to grab it from the <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/seabed" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>seabed</span></a> instead have caused rows. A good deal of the world’s cobalt, meanwhile, is extracted from small mines in the Democratic Republic of <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Congo" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Congo</span></a>, where child labour is common and working conditions are dire. Sodium batteries, by contrast, can use electrodes built from iron and manganese, which are plentiful and uncontroversial. Since the chemical components are cheap, a scaled-up industry should be able to produce batteries that cost less than their lithium counterparts. </p><p>"Sodium is not a perfect replacement for lithium. It is heavier, meaning sodium batteries will weigh more than lithium ones of an equivalent capacity. That is likely to rule them out in some cases where lightness is paramount. But for other applications, such as grid storage or home batteries, weight is irrelevant. Several Chinese carmakers are even beginning to put sodium batteries in electric vehicles.</p><p>"Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of sodium batteries is their late start. <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/LithiumIon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>LithiumIon</span></a> batteries were first commercialised in the 1990s and have benefited from decades of investment. But the rest of the world is behind China on both fronts anyway. America and the European Union have announced enormous programmes of green industrial subsidies. If they are determined to bankroll batteries, some of the pot should go to sodium."</p><p>Read more:<br><a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/10/26/sodium-batteries-offer-an-alternative-to-tricky-lithium" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">economist.com/leaders/2023/10/</span><span class="invisible">26/sodium-batteries-offer-an-alternative-to-tricky-lithium</span></a></p><p>Archived version:<br><a href="https://archive.ph/7x6JX#" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">archive.ph/7x6JX#</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p><p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/SolarPunkSunday" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SolarPunkSunday</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/DeepSeaMining" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>DeepSeaMining</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/NoLithiumMining" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NoLithiumMining</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/LeaveItInTheOcean" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>LeaveItInTheOcean</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/LeaveItInTheOcean" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>LeaveItInTheOcean</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/LithiumAlternatives" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>LithiumAlternatives</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/SodiumBatteries" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SodiumBatteries</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/RenewablesNow" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>RenewablesNow</span></a></p>