Virginia Tech chemist part of Department of Energy’s $50 million sodium-ion battery consortium

As demand for lithium-ion batteries to power cars, laptops, and cell phones has soared in recent years, the world has engaged in a fevered rush to find the raw materials needed to make the batteries. An increasing demand for lithium — along with its chemical partners, cobalt and nickel — could be difficult to meet.

Enter the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), six of its national laboratories, and eight university partners, including Virginia Tech. The DOE has awarded this group, known as the Low-cost Earth-abundant Na-ion Storage (LENS) consortium, $50 million over the next five years to look for alternatives.

The LENS consortium aims to develop high-energy, long-lasting sodium-ion batteries using safe, abundant, and inexpensive materials. This initiative addresses a critical need to reduce U.S. dependence on the limited and strategically important elements used in lithium-ion batteries, paving the way for a more sustainable future in electric-vehicle technology.

Feng Lin, professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech, will bring to the effort his expertise in finding the best combination of materials, chemistry, and manufacturing to make batteries more environmentally friendly and affordable.

“Our world is on the verge of a profound shift in how we power our everyday lives,” Lin said. “With the combined expertise of the LENS consortium, we now have a unique opportunity to pioneer new battery technologies for electric vehicles and to train a new generation of scientists and engineers who will contribute to our domestic battery innovation and manufacturing.”

The effort comes at a time when reducing U.S. dependence on critical elements in lithium-ion batteries is vital for the future of electric-vehicle battery technology.

Paul Kearns, director of Argonne National Laboratory, the lead agency, said the LENS consortium would “push sodium-ion battery technology forward and contribute to a clean-energy future for everyone. Our scientific expertise and dynamic collaborations in this important field will strengthen U.S. competitiveness.”

At present, lithium-ion batteries dominate the global energy storage market, especially for vehicles. They power devices ranging from smartphones to electric vehicles and can store energy from renewable sources like solar and wind. However, producing more and more lithium-ion batteries to power our cars and devices is becoming difficult.

“I have been talking for years about the challenges of scaling up lithium-ion batteries,” Lin said. “We don’t have enough access to the materials here at home and they are difficult to acquire internationally.”

As Lin explained, lithium-based batteries also require cobalt and nickel. Cobalt, for instance, is predominantly mined in just one place, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Sodium is a different story. The U.S. is particularly well-suited to supply both the raw materials and innovation for sodium-ion technology because a substantial amount of the world’s sodium chloride — table salt — and sodium carbonate is found domestically. Sodium-ion batteries have the potential to eliminate not just lithium in some applications, but also cobalt and nickel, providing a more affordable and sustainable solution. However, sodium-ion batteries currently store less energy per unit weight and volume, which results in a lower driving range — a stumbling block to such batteries competing with lithium-ion batteries.

“The issue we need to solve is that sodium-ion batteries are heavier than lithium-ion batteries per unit of stored energy,” Lin said. “But there’s so much potential: sodium-ion batteries could both reduce the cost of domestic manufacturing as well as offer faster charging and some unique safety features.”

Venkat Srinivasan, director of the LENS consortium and director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science, said: “The challenge ahead is improving sodium-ion energy density so that it first matches and then exceeds that of phosphate-based lithium-ion batteries while minimizing and eliminating the use of all critical elements. Importantly, any improvements must not compromise other performance metrics such as cycle life and safety.”

To achieve this goal, Argonne has convened a world-class team of researchers from national laboratories and universities. Each participant brings deep experience studying sodium-ion batteries. Collectively, they will work to discover and develop high-energy electrode materials, improve electrolytes, and design, integrate and benchmark battery cells.

An advisory board comprising well-established and emerging companies will provide the consortium with valuable industry perspectives, with a goal of nurturing an ecosystem in the U.S. for sodium-ion batteries.

LENS will be part of a growing portfolio within DOE on sodium-ion batteries, which includes research into the use of this emerging chemistry in electric vehicle and grid storage applications. 

The consortium includes eight university partners: Florida State University, University of California San Diego, University of Houston, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Maryland, University of Rhode Island, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Virginia Tech. With the involvement of all 14 partners, LENS will play a key role in training a new generation of battery scientists and researchers.

LENS is supported by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office.