Bangalore Scientists have developed low-cost, fast-charging sodium-ion based batteries and supercapacitors and integrated them into e-cycles, which will significantly reduce the cost of e-cycles, the Ministry of Science and Technology said in a release. are supposed to. Wednesday.
“Sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries have triggered academic and commercial interest as a potential complementary technology to lithium-ion batteries because of the high natural abundance of sodium and the resulting low cost of Na-ion batteries.”
These sodium materials are cheaper than Li-based materials, are high performing, and can be scaled up to industrial level production. The Na-ion cell can also be completely discharged to zero volts, similar to a capacitor, making it a safer option than many other storage technologies.
With further development, the price of these vehicles can be brought to the limit of 10000-15000, making them about 25% cheaper than Li-ion storage technologies-based e-bicycles. As the strategy for disposing of Na-ion-based batteries would be simpler, it could also help in addressing the climate mitigation issue.
“Taking advantage of the fact that the Na-ion battery can be charged rapidly, Professor Amrish Chandra in the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur has integrated it into the e-cycle – an easy, economical addition to the general public. option,” the release said.
The research on the supercapacitor was published in the Journal of Power Sources, and some patents on the use of these Na-ion-based batteries in e-cycles are in the pipeline.
Chandra is researching to develop energy storage technologies that are based on Na-ions, and his team has developed a large number of nanomaterials.
The team has used sodium iron phosphate and sodium manganese phosphate which they have synthesized with support from the Technology Mission Division (TMD) of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India to obtain Na-ion-based batteries and supercapacitors . These sodium materials were combined with various new architectures of carbon to develop the battery.
This research activity was funded under the content of the DST for Energy Storage Scheme.