El gobierno alemán financia la investigación de las baterías de iones de sodio
To this end, 21 national partners from science and industry are pooling their expertise from battery material development to the production of large-format cells to enable the rapid transfer of research results into practical applications, as announced by the Fraunhofer IFAM.
It is no secret why sodium-ion batteries are interesting: Unlike lithium, sodium is considered a non-critical raw material, is readily available, inexpensive and considered very safe. Particularly with regard to the supply chains, which in the case of lithium are mostly dominated by Asian companies, sodium-ion batteries can play an important role in sustainably covering European battery requirements and ensuring supply. However, the first Chinese manufacturers of sodium-ion batteries are already on the market.
The ‘SIB:DE FORSCHUNG’ project will identify active materials “that can be produced in a scalable way and offer competitive cell performance.” It will also develop demo cells that can be integrated into existing production processes for lithium-ion batteries where possible. “Despite similar electrical properties, lithium and sodium cannot simply be replaced,” explains the Fraunhofer IFAM. “Chemical differences between these elements currently lead to technical challenges that result in faster ageing of sodium batteries and impair their performance.”
SIB:DE is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). According to the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials, the total funding will be around 14 million euros.
The ‘SIB:DE FORSCHUNG’ project consortium consists of seven industrial partners and 14 academic partners, as well as an extended circle of currently 42 associated partners from science and industry. “This makes it the largest consortium in Germany on this topic. BASF is coordinating the overall project,” the press release states. The overall project is coordinated by BASF. “Only by closely interlinking expertise from science and industry a rapid transfer of research results to industrial scale-up can be achieved as well as a fast market penetration of sodium-ion technology,” writes the Fraunhofer IFAM.
The division of tasks is simple: while the academic partners are working on the material science and cell technology topics, the industrial partners focus on scaling up the materials and industry-oriented cell formats. By the end of the project in 2027, this should result in recommendations on the feasibility of an industrially viable process. The planned follow-up project ‘SIB:DE ENTWICKLUNG’ will then use these findings to conduct production research.
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