Sodium-ion batteries do not contain cobalt, nickel and lithium. They are therefore considered important for the energy transition and sustainability. The battery cell manufacturer Northvolt has achieved success.
The Swedish battery cell manufacturer Northvolt has achieved an important success in the development of a sodium-ion battery. The company said the cell developed is safer, cheaper and more sustainable than batteries that use traditional chemicals made from nickel, manganese and cobalt or iron phosphate. Lithium and graphite would also not be used. These metals have to be mined expensively and under environmentally harmful conditions. The sodium-ion battery, on the other hand, is made with minerals such as iron and sodium, which are abundant on global markets, the company said in a statement.
Peter Carlsson, CEO and co-founder of Northvolt, believes that the widespread use of sodium-ion batteries will accelerate the energy transition: “This is an important milestone for Northvolt’s market offering, but battery technology like this is also crucial to achieving global sustainability goals by making electrification more cost-effective, sustainable and accessible worldwide.”
Sodium-ion based car batteries?
The energy density of the new cell is 160 watt hours per kilogram, it goes on to say. This means that the energy density is close to the type of lithium batteries that are usually used in energy storage, writes the “Financial Times” (FT). However, lithium batteries used in electric cars have an energy density of around 250 to 300 watt hours per kilogram.
The sodium-ion battery is therefore only partially suitable for use as a car battery, at least so far. On the one hand, it is larger and heavier, which is disadvantageous for use in automobiles. The lower energy density is also a disadvantage, says Vattenfall. Sodium-ion batteries required more space to store the same amount of energy. This is a problem for use in cars or cell phones.
Almost 90 percent of the patents related to sodium technology came from China, writes the Fraunhofer Institute. The country already has a significant lead in this area. The Chinese battery manufacturer CATL has long achieved success in the development of the sodium-ion battery. According to media reports, small cars from the Chinese brands BYD and Chery were originally supposed to be equipped with sodium ion cells this year – despite the problems mentioned.
“Reset button for the traditional way of thinking and operating”
The Fraunhofer Institute is also looking into the benefits of sodium-ion technology and sees great opportunities in its application: “Thanks to its unique properties, a sodium-ion battery can, so to speak, be the reset button for the conventional way of thinking and using it of batteries. With sodium batteries, we can suddenly use a domestic raw material base that is independent of strategic, even critical imports,” says Michael Stelter, researcher at Fraunhofer IKTS and director at the Center for Energy and Environmental Chemistry CEEC at Friedrich-Schiller -University (FSU) in Jena.
Northvolt CEO Carlsson also describes the advantage to the “FT”. Dependence on China could be reduced by the new technology: “We are not as dependent on a series of strategic supply chains that China has created in a very efficient way.” Because the sodium-ion battery offers opportunities for local production. According to the Fraunhofer experts with regard to the materials, sodium is actually unlimited in Germany and therefore available inexpensively, for example in the form of sodium chloride, i.e. common salt.
The price development for the critical components in lithium-ion batteries in the next few years will be decisive for the cost advantage of sodium technology, says Martin Oschatz, holder of the Chair of Chemistry of Materials for Energy Applications in Jena.
Is an IPO planned?
The company Northvolt, which currently has 5,000 employees, was founded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2016. The German car manufacturers Volkswagen and BMW, among others, are involved in Northvolt. Scania and Volvo are also partners. The US bank Goldman Sachs and the investment company BlackRock are also among the investors.
In February of this year there were media reports about a possible IPO for Northvolt this year. And it was only in October that the “FT” reported, citing insiders, that the shares could be listed in Stockholm. The target is a company value of around $20 billion. However, it is very questionable whether this will actually happen in 2023.
CEO Carlsson told the FT that Northvolt wanted to ensure it was ready to become a listed company. At the same time, management also wants to ensure that it has sufficient capital if the market conditions for an IPO do not exist.