--- Today, the market has stabilized a bit. Continuing our new energy vehicle feature.
Ltd. today did a big thing, said tomorrow night to release the sodium ion battery, today to rub this hot. Let's start with sodium batteries, a battery technology that is said to overturn lithium batteries.
Sodium electricity is not new. When the lithium battery was born in 1972, sodium batteries were born.
In 1980, the first sodium-ion battery was born. In the early days of the battery industry, lithium and sodium batteries developed in tandem. However, as the battery industry became more industrialized and commercialized, sodium batteries gradually began to recede from the stage and lithium batteries took center stage.
Because of the smaller molecules and stronger activity, lithium batteries are naturally more suitable as batteries, and the elimination of sodium batteries from lithium batteries in the past is also the result of industrial development.
However, with the development of the battery industry and the widespread use of lithium batteries, the price of lithium salt has begun to rise, while the price of sodium salt is very stable because of its easy availability. Therefore, as the price of lithium salt rises, people can also look for alternatives to lithium salt to produce batteries, and sodium power is starting to gain market attention again.
Of course, no matter how hard sodium works, its natural molecular activity makes it impossible to obtain an energy density other than that of lithium. Naturally, the energy density of sodium is lower than that of lithium. At present, the energy density of sodium can reach 120-130Wh/kg. With the increase of compaction density, the energy density may still increase, but the energy density is 160-180wh/kg higher than iron and lithium, and 200wh/kg higher than ternary batteries.
Therefore, in terms of application scenarios, sodium batteries may partially replace lithium batteries in the future, such as in two-wheeled vehicles and some energy storage fields.
From the perspective of the four main materials (anode, cathode, electrolyte and diaphragm).
Sodium batteries use the same diaphragm as lithium batteries. (Currently, there is some research to provide a newer solution for separators.) .
The electrolyte solvent for sodium electricity is the same as the current lithium electrolyte, where the lithium salt used needs to be changed from lithium hexafluorophosphate to sodium hexafluorophosphate. The most important thing is that the additives will be very different. In order to meet its low temperature performance, sodium power has made very important iterations and updates to the additives. Currently, the most important patents of sodium power R&D companies are in the field of electrolyte additives.
As far as the anode is concerned, because of the large molecular weight of the sodium ion, the anode of sodium power will be made of hard carbon made of anthracite, and some people are trying to use soft carbon, so the current graphite anode is definitely not able to meet the requirements of the sodium ion. So I've been thinking, if the market speculation sodium electricity, coal companies will not be incidental speculation?
Anode is also a major difference between sodium and lithium batteries. Sodium battery cathode is not yet very mature technology route. Laminate oxide is widely used in domestic head sodium power companies as their current cathode material, but in the second generation technology, we plan to use cathode polyanions (such as sodium iron phosphate and sodium vanadium phosphate) or Prussian blue material as their second generation cathode for sodium batteries. Therefore, sodium cathode materials are still in continuous iteration, and the technology is not fully mature yet, so it is difficult to realize the mass production of sodium electricity at this stage. Once a company has invested in the mass production of a sodium cathode material, new and better technologies will be available soon after the production, and the money invested before will be wasted, which is not worth the loss. From this dimension, we can also see that sodium power is still undergoing continuous R&D and is on the eve of industrialization.
In addition to the materials, sodic will not use copper foil as the collector, but will use lighter and cheaper aluminum foil.
In terms of development stage, as mentioned above, sodium batteries should be in the pre-industrial stage.
There are still a lot of barriers to break through, and I think there are two most important issues in the industrialization of sodium batteries.
First, as I mentioned above, the current technology of sodium power is still in the process of rapid iteration, and compared with lithium batteries, the current technology has no obvious advantages. Who will drive the massive expansion? After all, the current industrialization of capital expenditure may be wasted because of technology iteration.
Second, sodium power has not yet formed a perfect large-scale industrial chain.
All materials other than the diaphragm need to be replaced, and new materials are very costly to scale up. Only large-scale production can reduce the cost of materials and achieve the purpose of reducing the cost of sodium electricity. But the downstream applications are limited, who will promote the development of sodium electricity on a large scale, and who will drive the overall cost of the industry chain down?
Of course, if the contemporary Amplex Technology Co., Ltd. is willing to promote the formation of sodium power industry chain, I think the speed of building a perfect industry chain should be faster. We can pay attention to the release of the sodium power by Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.
In terms of impact, how much of an impact will the development of sodium power have on the current materials companies?
Before talking about this issue, we must reiterate the fact that the development of sodium batteries is more of a supplement to lithium batteries than a substitute for lithium batteries, and the battery industry is a fast growing industry. On the track of rapid development, I think there is room for the development of sodium and lithium batteries. I can only say, if the sodium battery really large-scale industrialization, will affect the growth rate of some lithium battery materials companies.
Specific to each link.
For battery companies, this is actually a technology iteration. Although the production process of sodium and lithium batteries is almost the same, but because the positive and negative electrolyte have changed, the production details of the process will inevitably have some changes, which will inevitably require the battery factory to carry out technological iteration, update the production line. I do not think the impact on the head of the company. The current head of the production of lithium batteries should also be able to produce sodium batteries.
The impact on the diaphragm companies is limited, because sodium batteries also use the current diaphragm.
There is a certain impact on electrolyte companies, especially additives, because the core patent of sodium power is electrolyte additives, which will certainly affect the existing pattern of electrolyte additives.
It will also have a certain impact on negative companies. After all, graphite is definitely not used, and there is a certain difference between the production of hard carbon and graphite. For the cathode companies, high nickel ternary cathode impact is not significant, sodium power will never challenge the high nickel ternary cathode.
The impact on lithium iron phosphate enterprises will be greater.
However, we also need to pay attention to a problem here. At present, the cathode material of sodium power has not been finalized, the relevant sodium power companies can only develop their own materials for patent protection, and there is no way to patent protection for new cathode materials. In theory, the current lithium cathode companies can develop their own cathode by slightly changing the composition of the current cathode material formula. It is also possible that Ningde and other manufacturers have mastered the cathode technology and found the current production and processing of lithium cathode enterprises.
Moreover, for the cathode, whether it is sodium or lithium, the core is still the ability to scale production capacity and cost control, rather than the ability to research and development. But the current sodium leader in the sodium and sodium innovation energy in the production process is clearly lack of capacity. If Ningde really want to quickly promote sodium on a large scale, to find the lithium battery cathode enterprises foundry is undoubtedly the best solution.
What is the current investment value of sodium power companies?
At present, the main domestic sodium power companies are still engaged in the research and development of sodium power materials (cathode electrolyte cathode), the leading companies are Zhongke Haina (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Sodium Innovation Energy (Shanghai).
The two companies do have some forward-looking layout in the R&D of sodium materials, among which Sodium Innovation Energy mainly develops cathode materials and electrolyte materials.
In addition to cathode and electrolyte materials, Sodium China also cooperates with Huayang to develop cathode materials, and Huayang even claims to make batteries in the future.
Don't believe in making batteries here. The production process of sodium batteries is basically the same as lithium batteries. New companies coming in to do batteries will only lose money. Moreover, the current development of sodium batteries need the promotion and support of the head battery factory. Natron and Zhongke sodium are too small to promote the development of the industry. We know that sodium battery is not because Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.
I think the better ending for these two companies is that they will become material producers in the field of sodium batteries in the future with their first-mover advantage in R&D, but it remains to be seen if they can do so, because material producers need not only the R&D capability on the material side, but also the production capability, which is the most important thing. At present, both companies do not have any production capacity.
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