this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
428 points (85.9% liked)
Technology
59341 readers
5218 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
And it's more ethical and environmentally friendlier than Lithium-Ion, right?
Norway has just started a deep sea excavation for cobalt and copper which as I understand (I'm clueless) can be omitted from sodium-ion batteries. The excavation is roughly of the size of equador and will take place in an area that may contain previously unknown lifeforms and critically endangered eco-system.
A paragraph of an article seems to show their non-chalance regarding the ecosystem impacts and unknown side-effects:
"The Norwegian government recognizes that it can’t be sure any mining would be sustainable—it’s not been able to determine the likely environmental impact of extracting minerals in its waters, nor exactly what minerals are there to be found. “We do not currently have the knowledge needed to extract minerals from the seabed in the manner required,” says Næss."
These are the guys whose grid runs on 99% hydropower but they keep drilling for fossile fuels and now rare earths to export them and in addition are still hunting wales.
So to summarise: I'm very happy that there seems to be an eco friendly battery where its main component is the overambundantly availabe sodium. And the short wikipedia entry seems to reflect, that it's a more simple tech.
The amount of metallic sodium we need for these purposes dwarfs compared to what we're using directly as NaCl, that is, table salt, not just in food but primarily industrial processes. Which again dwarfs compared to what we have available (vaguely gestures at the oceans). Sixth most abundant element in the earth's crust and conveniently most of it is in the form of huge contiguous dried-up oceans buried somewhere.
Thinking of it should become standard practice to actually use the salt that's accumulated when desalinating to get drinking water, lots of issues with locally increasing the salt level in the ocean even though on a large scale the change in salinity is absolutely negligible.