The advantage of sodium ion battery under the soaring lithium price shows that Hu Yongsheng, founder of China Science and Technology Heiner, talks about the prospect of industrial development.

The market for new energy vehicles and lithium batteries continues to be hot this year, among which the price of raw materials for lithium batteries is rising continuously. Under the background that the supply of lithium resources falls short of demand, some enterprises have paid attention to sodium ion batteries for a long time.

In July this year, Ningde Times released the first generation of sodium ion battery, whose single cell energy density reached 160 Whhand kg, which is currently the highest level in the world. Meng Xiangfeng, assistant to the chairman of Ningde Times, recently revealed that a sodium ion battery production line will be put into production in Ningde era next year.

On the policy side, recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in its reply to the "proposal on vigorously developing sodium-ion batteries in China" that new batteries such as lithium-ion batteries and sodium-ion batteries are "ballast stones" to promote the development of new energy industry. the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will strengthen its layout and promote the development of sodium-ion batteries.

So what is the technical level of domestic sodium ion batteries at present? How long will it take for commercial application? Which domestic enterprises have been in the forefront of the industry? A reporter from Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily launched a survey.

Three technical paths of sodium ion battery

On September 28, Hu Yongsheng, a researcher at the Institute of Physics of Chinese Science and Technology and the founder of Beijing Zhongke Haina Science and Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhongke Haina"), gave a keynote speech on sodium ion batteries.

Hu Yongsheng said that lithium-ion battery should have the best comprehensive performance of energy density, power density and cycle life of all secondary battery systems at present, and its cost has dropped 10 times in the past decade, so it is the best choice for electric vehicles. But the risk for the future is that lithium reserves are limited and unevenly distributed (about 70% in South America).

A senior figure in the new energy industry told Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that China currently relies on imports for 80% of its lithium resources, and there is a risk of "choking", making it difficult to support the demand and development of both new energy vehicles and large-scale energy storage industries at the same time.

In terms of cost, according to the spot price of SMM, as of September 28, industrial-grade lithium carbonate quoted 169500-172500 yuan / ton, battery-grade lithium carbonate 172500-174500 yuan / ton, overall, lithium carbonate prices began in September to continue the upward trend at the end of August continued to rise rapidly, and the rate of increase is increasing.

With the gradual emergence of resource-side bottlenecks and the pressure brought by the upstream cost side, the research and mass production process of battery system with richer resource reserves and lower cost has been accelerated within the industry, and the role of sodium as a substitute for lithium has attracted attention in the battery field.

The reporter learned that from the technical route, similar to lithium-ion batteries, there are three technical routes for sodium-ion batteries, and their main technical paths are distinguished according to the different positive materials used. The first is the use of polyanion cathode material, which has the performance of fast charging, long cycle life, but high cost; the second is Prussian blue cathode material for sodium ion battery, which is currently arranged by some companies; the third is a layered oxide material, but the cathode material contains nickel and cobalt, and the cost is relatively high.

It is still in the early stage of industrialization.

For the third technology in the path, is there an alternative element of nickel and cobalt that has the same performance while further reducing costs? In response, Hu Yongsheng said that his team found that copper had the properties of nickel and cobalt, and the cost of copper was half that of nickel and 1/4 of that of cobalt, and finally developed a copper-based sodium ion layered oxide cathode material.

In terms of anode materials, Hu Yongsheng said, "We propose to use very cheap anthracite to turn anthracite into carbon material, and finally use it as a negative material in the battery after simple treatment, which is very cost-effective."

In 2017, Hu Yongsheng founded China Ke Heiner. It is understood that the energy density of the sodium ion battery developed by China Ke Hainer is close to 145 Whhand kg and the cycle life is more than 4500 times.

In March this year, China Kehina announced the completion of hundreds of millions of yuan A round of financing, invested by Wutong Tree Capital, which will be used to build a production line of positive and negative materials for sodium ion batteries with an annual capacity of 2000 tons.

In addition to China Kehina, at present, including Ningde era, Huayang shares and other enterprises are working on the industrial layout of sodium ion batteries.

The above senior person told reporters that the current sodium ion battery products will be mainly used in the following application scenarios of 150Wh/kg, providing energy storage batteries with wide temperature range, safer, higher rate and lower cost, as a very useful supplement to lithium-ion batteries, forming the support and protection of lithium-ion batteries, to a certain extent, alleviate the limited development of energy storage batteries caused by the shortage of lithium resources, while gradually replacing lead-acid batteries.

It should also be noted that Ping an Securities pointed out in a recent research report that sodium ion battery is still in the early stage of industrialization. In the short term, due to the low degree of industrialization of sodium ion battery, the advantage of material cost of sodium ion battery has not been fully reflected. If the pace of technological progress or cost improvement is slower than expected, it will affect the process of industrialization and cause it to lose its competitive advantage.