Australia-based Altech Batteries has announced that its first Cerenergy ABS60 battery prototype is online and operating successfully at its joint venture partner Fraunhofer IKTS’ test laboratory in Dresden, Germany.
The prototype 60 kWh sodium chloride solid-state battery energy storage system has been integrated into a specially designed test station.
The integration is aimed at enabling daily charging and discharging cycles to assess the battery’s efficiency on a regular basis. It will also allow checking it for stability, and overall performance under real conditions.
The Cerenergy batteries do not contain lithium; instead, they use sodium ions from common table salt. The cathode consists of salt (sodium chloride) and nickel.
The technology used in them is different from sodium-ion batteries (which employ liquid electrolyte) or sodium sulfur batteries.
The Cerenergy ABS60 battery
According to Altech, it has designed the Cerenergy Sodium Alumina Solid State (SAS) 60 KWh battery pack (ABS60) for the renewable energy and grid storage market.
The company claims that Cerenergy batteries are totally fire and explosion proof and are not prone to thermal runaway, which is one of the biggest advantages over lithium-ion batteries.
It can also operate efficiently between minus 20° Celsius (-4 degree Fahrenheit) to +60 °C (140 degrees Fahrenheit) range and gives high performances and durability regardless of the ambient temperature. The core temperature of the battery is self-sustaining and does not require cooling like lithium-ion batteries.
The life span of the battery is beyond 15 years, as per the company’s claims.
In a recent study by ITP Renewables, the Cerenergy type battery did not show any deterioration in the estimated state of health in the first 700 cycles of testing compared with the normal deterioration in LFP and NMC lithium-ion batteries.
How does the battery work?
When the Cerenergy battery is being charged , electrons flow from the positive terminal to the negative terminal.
Sodium ions from the salt (sodium chloride) migrate through the solid ceramic electrode toward the negative canister terminal. The remaining chloride ions attach themselves to the nickel to form nickel chloride in the cathode medium.
The sodium forms a molten anode layer on the outside of the ceramic tube, contacting the steel canister, and the battery is fully charged.
During discharge, electrons flow back; molten sodium is oxidized into Na+ ions, and transfer back through the solid-state ceramic tube forming sodium chloride. Nickel chloride is reduced back to metallic nickel.
With an energy capacity of approximately 110-130 Wh/kg, Cerenergy batteries rival LFP lithium-ion batteries (90-110 Wh/kg). Their 4-6 hour charge and discharge times make them ideally suited for grid storage applications.
The ABS60 battery pack consists of 240 Cerenergy cells, each with a rating of 2.58 V.
The joint venture believes that the battery is ideally suited for the grid storage or long duration energy sector where very high power in a short period of time (like high power EV) is not required.
The company also said that key results from more than 500 cycles demonstrated stable performance, including a consistent discharge capacity of 80 Ah and an efficiency of up to 91%.
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