Korean researchers say they have made a “breakthrough” in sodium battery charging. They could load and unload it within a few seconds. This could greatly accelerate the mobility transition.
It has long been said that sodium batteries offer enormous advantages over the previously most commonly used lithium-ion batteries. Not only are they considered significantly more cost-effective, they are also more sustainable because they can be produced almost entirely without rare earth metals.
In addition, they are less susceptible to thermal instability and can have a longer service life, improving the performance and reliability of electric vehicles.
Charging considerably faster than ‘normal’ refueling
The battery developed by scientists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) could accelerate the transition to electric mobility again. As they describe in the trade journal ‘Energy Storage Materials’, they can fully charge and discharge their energy storage in just a few seconds – and this is much faster than a normal fossil fuel refueling process.
This is made possible by materials normally used for so-called supercapacitors. These are extremely high power density energy storage devices – these are also known for their blazing charging speeds, but can only store a very small amount of energy.
Hybrid of battery and supercapacitor
The researchers have now developed a kind of battery-supercapacitor hybrid to leverage the benefits of both technologies – and have achieved record values for energy and power density. In addition to the tremendous charging speed, the lab-built battery also had a longer range than previously used storage devices. Due to the high power density, even more powerful electric motors can be driven.
First sodium batteries already installed
The big question now is how quickly the battery can be used in practice. The first sodium batteries are already being installed in electric vehicles in China, but so far they have had to make do with a low range of about 250 kilometers.
In any case, the newly developed battery should clearly exceed this, as with 247 watt hours it has significantly more storage capacity than the market-ready model (150 watt hours).
Source: Krone
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