First American sodium-ion battery factory will make cells with lifespan of 50,000 cycles that charge in 10 minutes

A $1.4 billion sodium-ion battery factory in South Carolina will be putting the US on the map when it comes to large-scale production of the promising battery technology.

Built by Natron Energy, the Edgecombe County facility is planned for 24 GWh of annual capacity, which would turn Natron from a startup into the first sodium-ion battery production juggernaut on US soil.

Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper, safer, with much longer lifespan and faster charging than conventional Li-ion packs.

Chinese companies are already using them in grid-level energy storage systems of local utilities, to balance their renewable energy mix. Some sodium-ion battery packs are even making their way into electric vehicles there, even though the chemistry offers lower energy density than Li-ion batteries.

In the US, however, this is a nascent industry, and Natron thinks it has cracked the sodium-ion battery code with its patented Prussian blue electrode chemistry. The "pores" in the Prussian blue material's atomic structure are larger than sodium ions, so they can travel freely without stretching the structure and degrading it over time.

This means that Natron's sodium-ion battery factory will produce cells that are capable of up to 50,000 charge-discharge cycles, which is 5x the longevity of conventional Li-ion batteries. The unimpeded flow of sodium ions also means that they are much faster to top up, taking less than 15 minutes for a full charge.

The sodium battery chemistry also allows for very wide operating temperature range of32 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit (0 to 45 degrees Celsius).

Last but not least, the sodium-ion battery of Natron uses "minerals readily available in the U.S. and manufactured in Michigan," so the factory is getting state and federal grants for made-in-US battery projects that aim at achieving supply chain independence.

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