A surprising breakthrough could help sodium-ion batteries rival lithium—and even turn seawater into drinking water. Scientists discovered that keeping water inside a key battery material, instead of removing it as traditionally done, dramatically boosts performance. The “wet” version stores nearly twice as much charge, charges faster, and remains stable for hundreds of cycles, placing it among the top-performing sodium battery materials ever reported.
    • Damage@feddit.itEnglish
      61·
      42 minutes ago

      I can only hope one day people will stop repeating reddit clichés

  • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.orgEnglish
    19·
    2 hours ago

    Finally a new one!

    It was too quiet during the whole last year. But before, we had about 2 revolutionary new battery technologies every week.

  • iopq@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    4 hours ago

    Desalinating water might be the best part. Usually, solar power has the downside of needing storage and desalination has the downside of big energy requirements. If you can do both at the same time, it’s a big win for dry climates with lots of sun

  • thericofactor@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    63·
    4 hours ago

    Sodium ion batteries have less energy density as opposed to Lithium ion (100-150 WH per Kg instead of 150-250). I’m curious how much these “wet” batteries improve that. The article doesn’t say.

    Nonetheless, even if it’s not the new battery for your car, it could be useful as energy storage for the grid, storing green (solar) energy for the night, and desalinating seawater at the same time.

    • apftwb@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      3 hours ago

      the strategy of retaining crystal interlayer water yielded a specific capacity of 280 mA h g−1 at 10 mA g−1, one of the highest capacities reported for SIB cathodes in literature.

      All I could find. This isn’t a statement about capacity(?) Units are wrong(?)

      Its worth noting how preliminary this research is. Currently these “batteries” are just jars with chemicals.

      https://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2025/TA/D5TA05128B

      https://www.rsc.org/suppdata/d5/ta/d5ta05128b/d5ta05128b2.mp4

      • finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        2 hours ago

        mAh/g (milliamp-hours per gram) is essentially still a measurement of capacity, but in terms of current instead of power.

        We can do a little dimensional analysis here to translate between them. Power = Current x Voltage, so you’d multiply this (Current x Time)/(Weight) value by the nominal voltage of the cell to get to (Power x Time)/(Weight).

        Phone batteries are often specified in units of Current*Time (e.g. milliamp-hours), but I’m not completely sure why. I think it has to do with voltages being standardized for certain types of cells, so the only real variable in the battery capacity is the current.

        Edit: rearranged some ideas to make more sense

        • Wispy2891@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          33 minutes ago

          I’m not completely sure why

          I think it’s marketing

          5000 mAh is much a bigger number than 19 Wh and marketing loves huge numbers

          Kinda like BMW did with the i3.

          In 2013 Tesla was selling a model with a 60 kWh battery so BMW had the genius idea to install a 20 kWh battery BUT refer to it as “60 Ah” battery.

          Tesla introduced the 90 kWh battery? BMW responds with a 94 Ah battery (28 kWh)

          Newest Tesla has 100 kWh battery now? BMW has 120 Ah battery (38 kWh)

          “See? Higher number!”, says the marketing

          And in order to have a comparable range number they had to implement heavy weight reduction techniques like using carbon fiber for the body, negating any cost saving from the smaller battery AND giving the owner a total loss after small collisions as it shatters instead of bending

    • chocrates@piefed.worldEnglish
      16·
      4 hours ago

      We hear about a new battery chemistry like every week. Do most never get to commercialization?

      • WanderingThoughts@europe.pubEnglish
        5·
        1 hour ago

        One in ten of chemistries in the lab work in real world conductions. One in ten of those are cheap enough to consider production. One in ten of those can scale up to mass manufacturing. Most research works like that. You have to keep going until you hit jackpot.

      • apftwb@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17·
        3 hours ago

        They mostly these articles are showing new avenues for research. Most are deadends usually due to issues with production/scalability.

        Sodium Ions batteries are coming to market, however the issue is that Lithium Ion are just improving faster and making it harder for Sodium Ion batteries to compete.

      • meco03211@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        4 hours ago

        R&d on these I’m guessing takes a little while. And it greatly depends on what niche they fill. Like the poster above said these might have lower density. For applications that move, that’s not usually good. How sensitive are they to hot and cold? That could necessitate thermal management.

    • Gsus4@mander.xyzOPEnglish
      31·
      4 hours ago

      It’s already ionized e.g. NaOH.

      The compound, called nanostructured sodium vanadate hydrate (NVOH), delivered far stronger results when used in its hydrated form.

  • dhruv3006@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    4 hours ago

    I think the real breakthrough will come when we will be able to make powerful microbatteries.