- "Battery makers have been working on sodium-ion batteries for many years, but the United States may have a long-term advantage in the technology. Almost all of the world’s naturally occurring geological deposits of soda ash, the raw material for sodium-ion batteries, are in southwestern Wyoming."
That's a really odd-sounding claim. Is there any basis to it? Sodium is dirt-cheap and it doesn't seem plausible it for to be a major factor in battery economics.
It's even odder that when I look into the statistics, China is actually the world's #1 producer of soda ash[0]. With the caveat that they don't mine it from geology, like the NYT is focused on; they synthesize it (meaning the carbonate salt, Na₂CO₃) from salt brine[1,2] (i.e., from NaCl).
edit to add: According to [3], the prices in China are below $300 a ton, for context.
[0] (.pdf) https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-soda-ash.p... ("China produced an estimated 29 million tons of soda ash in 2023 (most of which was synthetic) and was the leading producing country followed by, in descending order, Turkey and the United States")
To summarize, because my that article does go on before getting to the "good" part:
Removing the graphite anode from some batteries would make them cheaper and more efficient, but the downside is that they charge much more slowly. As a result this tech would be used only in auxiliary batteries.
The second announcement is faster charging, although this isn't explained.
The third announcement is the use of Sodium-ion batteries, although they admit this would require a different geometry, and therefore might be first used in trucks.
- "Battery makers have been working on sodium-ion batteries for many years, but the United States may have a long-term advantage in the technology. Almost all of the world’s naturally occurring geological deposits of soda ash, the raw material for sodium-ion batteries, are in southwestern Wyoming."
That's a really odd-sounding claim. Is there any basis to it? Sodium is dirt-cheap and it doesn't seem plausible it for to be a major factor in battery economics.
It's even odder that when I look into the statistics, China is actually the world's #1 producer of soda ash[0]. With the caveat that they don't mine it from geology, like the NYT is focused on; they synthesize it (meaning the carbonate salt, Na₂CO₃) from salt brine[1,2] (i.e., from NaCl).
edit to add: According to [3], the prices in China are below $300 a ton, for context.
[0] (.pdf) https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-soda-ash.p... ("China produced an estimated 29 million tons of soda ash in 2023 (most of which was synthetic) and was the leading producing country followed by, in descending order, Turkey and the United States")
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_process
[2] https://cen.acs.org/business/specialty-chemicals/synthetic-s... ("Can synthetic soda ash survive?" (2023))
[3] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/07/11/new-soda-ash-factory-... ("New soda ash factory in China to reduce solar glass prices" (2023))
https://archive.ph/HH5Ll
To summarize, because my that article does go on before getting to the "good" part:
Removing the graphite anode from some batteries would make them cheaper and more efficient, but the downside is that they charge much more slowly. As a result this tech would be used only in auxiliary batteries.
The second announcement is faster charging, although this isn't explained.
The third announcement is the use of Sodium-ion batteries, although they admit this would require a different geometry, and therefore might be first used in trucks.