E. Kendrick
Warwick University,
United Kingdom
Keywords: energy storage, sodium ion battery
Summary:
Sodium ion batteries have been garnering renewed interests in the last few year due to their potential low cost and suitability as a 'drop-in' technology for lithium ion batteries. Lithium ion batteries have been commercially available for 25 years, and there has been a steady improvement in their properties and performance due to materials developments and cell optimisations, however other considerations such as sustainability and cost are now also required. In particular for stationary energy storage, where cost and lifetime are key for the economic viability of this technology. Sodium ion batteries offer an advantage over lithium ion batteries in terms of cost, and their potential for stationary energy storage has been investigated. This interest is in part due to the high abundance and uniform distribution of sodium compared to lithium. This talk will cover a novel sodium ion cell chemistry based upon a tin-containing nickel layered oxide cathode6 and a hard carbon anode, we show the electrochemical testing at a materials level and how that translates to testing at a cell level. The full cell development of this new sodium-ion battery (NIB) technology is also discussed. From the materials screening and materials discovery aspects, the scale-up and manufacturability consideration of the materials, the electrode and full cell development of this novel technology. To highlight the cell development in particular we show the optimisation of larger format 3.2 Ah and 4 Ah cells, which illustrates the cell engineering required to optimise the first cycles losses, the cyclability and energy density trade-offs when developing a new battery chemistry. In summary we show this progression from materials discovery, crystal structure property analysis, to manufacturing and electrochemical device optimisation for a novel sodium-ion battery technology.