Russian and German scientists develop ‘sodium sandwich’ that could replace lithium batteries

There is fundamental problem with sodium batteries:

• atomic_weight - element
  
• 6.94 - Li (520 kJ/mol)
  
• 22.99 - Na (496 kJ/mol)
  
• 39.10 - K (419 kJ/mol)
  
• 85.47 - Rb (403 jK/mol)
  
• 132.91 - Cs (376 kJ/mol)
  
• 223 - Fr (393 kJ/mol)

Sodium has 3x the mass per mole of lithium and less ionization energy. For stationary applications, weight does not matter. But for transportation, weight and the ionization energy are critical.

I used to follow GreenCarCongress until I realized they often did a cut-and-paste from a press release into an article. I did a quick Google search for "sodium battery greencarcongress" and found a lot of hits going back over a decade. We call higher weight and lower energy a 'dead end' for transportation. As a stationary application, no problem.

Bob Wilson

 

Keep an open mind, maybe the cars of the future won't need to move as much.

 

ALL "batteries" are "sandwiches" of one style or another.

And elemental sodium tends to EXPLODE when exposed to air and/or moisture at room temperature.