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The Central Electro-Chemical Research Institute (CECRI), a unit of the goverment-owned Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, will be ready to licence technology for the mass production of sodium-ion cells, if things so as planned. The production could give a big pep to electric mobility because sodium-ion batteries are ten times cheaper than the conventional lithium-ion.
Lithium, due to its light weight nature and ability to pack a lot of energy, has become the much sought-after metal, but because of its rare availability, scientists have been working on a cheaper and better material to make batteries. Sodium, available in infinite quantities in sea water, has long been a preferred option, but the coquettish metal is also tricky to handle due to its reactive nature. The difficulty has not deterred scientists at CECRI from trying, who have already developed the technology for making lithium-ion cells and have offered to it to the industry.
Dr A S Prakash, Principal Scientist at the CECRI, who has been experimenting with cell chemistries for years, said that the team headed by Dr S Mohan, Chief Scientist, has “solved many major issues” in the development of a sodium-ion cell. He said that issues such as electrolytes and separators have been solved and the team is “now working on the engineering side”.
The sodium-ion battery
The scientific community believes that the battery, still in its infancy, will be the next big thing in energy storage technology, and hence in e-mobility. “Sodium-ion battery technology is rapidly as an alternative to lithium-ion for massive electrochemical energy storage applications because of sustainability and cost reasons,” said Sathiya Mariyappan, a researcher at College de France, Paris, in a recent scientific paper in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society.
A French company called Tiamat, backed by scientists at College de France, is in the forefront of sodium-ion technology. The CECRI’s sodium-ion cell now packs 400 milli amphere hours (mAH) of energy, at voltage level of 3V, and the plan is to raise it to about 1.2-1.5 AH in a year.Prakash said that the increase in energy density had come about by developing electrolytes and electrodes – which are components of any cell.
“We know how to make a sodium-ion cell, we know what to do to improve it,” he told BusinessLine .
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