Unlimited Power and Nearly Unlimited Batteries

This is been implimented already and so will other battery protocols show up. It is not that it is easy, but the underlying tech has now been worked on for decades.

The EV is now established and the hunt is on for best solution.  understand that we have seen and used the best first solutions.  issues like cost, weight and safety will now matter much more to buyers.

so we are getting there and just as fast as practical. nothing is sitting on the shelf.

Unlimited Power and Nearly Unlimited Batteries

September 11, 2023 by Brian Wang

CATL of China is mass producing generation one sodium ion batteries starting next month. The first factory has about a 40 GWH per year capacity.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/09/unlimited-power-and-nearly-unlimited-batteries.html#more-186920

China has 16 out of 20 globally planned or built sodium battery factories according to Benchmark Minerals.

CATL’s first-generation sodium battery generates 160-watt-hours per kilogram. This is 10% less energy than iron LFP batteries and 40% less than mass produced nickel batteries. CATL plans to increase the energy density of next generation sodium ion to 200 Wh/kg. CATL’s sodium-ion batteries will be used by China’s Chery, the first automaker to use the technology.

Nextbigfuture now has a video discussing the potential of sodium ion batteries. Brian Wang spoke with Randy Kirk on the topic of sodium ion.

The first generation sodium ion are a bit cheaper than LFP but the volumes will not be worldchanging. However, the second generation sodium ion could reach $40 per kWh. Iron LFP batteries could get to $50/kWh with really high volume and efficiency at the cell level. The future low price of sodium ion would make for insanely cheap fixed storage products like the Tesla Megapack and Powerwalls.

They also do not have practical material limits. There is no shortage of salt or soda ash. The United States has about 90% of the world’s readily mined reserves of soda ash. Wyoming has 47 billion tons of mineable soda ash in the Green River basin. There would be hundreds of TWH of power storage from each billion tons of soda ash.

Based on material costs of $4 per kWh there could be $8 to $10 per kWh sodium ion batteries in the future. This would be ten times cheaper than energy storage batteries today.

Soda Ash Mine in Wyoming

A new mine project near Green River will tap into the world’s largest soda ash deposit and satisfy the growing demand for electric vehicles and solar panels.

In 2019, annual demand for soda ash was about 58 million tons and by 2021, that jumped to 63 million tons.

The Wyoming mine, which the company is calling Project West, has the potential to produce 3 million tons to start and is scalable, so the company can increase production later. To facilitate soda ash exports, the company received a permit to export 14 million tons from a Stockton, California, port terminal. The mining will be done with an in-situ process to extract soda ash from trona ore. The ore is then processed into soda ash.

Water is injected as a brine or salt and water solution. It is then circulated throughout the mine workings to dissolve soda ash and salt from the original pillars and walls. The brine is pumped to an evaporation pond. Submersible pumps are used, each pumping about 9,000 liters per minute. As the liquid cools, the soda ash and salt crystals settle to the bottom of the pond. The cool brine is then heated and reinjected into the mine to start dissolving soda ash again. The remaining soda ash in the ponds is removed with floating dredges and pumped to the mill.

They will capture and recycle the water.