Energy

[ysabetwordsmith]

New sodium ion battery stores twice the energy and desalinates seawater

A surprising breakthrough could help sodium-ion batteries rival lithium—and even turn seawater into drinking water. Scientists discovered that keeping water inside a key battery material, instead of removing it as traditionally done, dramatically boosts performance. The “wet” version stores nearly twice as much charge, charges faster, and remains stable for hundreds of cycles, placing it among the top-performing sodium battery materials ever reported.


This is super exciting because of its double benefit: battery materials and drinking water.  Also awesome, unlike rare minerals used in many batteries, sodium is something Earth has in great abundance. \o/

Comments

[warriorsavant]

Very interesting. There's always a huge gap between first experiment and large scale production, but let's be optimistic.

Li ion batteries will have an edge for portable things (cars and phones). Heavier batteries are fine for mass storage, like an entire building/power grids.

Have to disagree with your last sentence, about not needing rare minerals. They specifically say these are sodium-vanadium batteries, and vanadium is a rare earth. That having been said, very interesting tech, and grounds for optimism