Economic analysis for room-temperature sodium-ion battery technologies

With the emphasis on new energy and environment, the application of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries is gradually expanding in the field of electric vehicles and energy storage, which is bound to enhance lithium resource consumption. Under the current situation of the increasingly scarce lithium resources, it is inevitably so difficult to reduce the raw materials cost of lithium-ion batteries, which probably limits their large-scale application in energy storage. Nowadays, room-temperature sodium-ion batteries for large-scale energy storage have become a research hot topic due to a great deal of advantages such as abundant resources, low price, high energy conversion efficiency, long cycle life and low maintenance cost. In this work, analyses are carried on the electrode material selection and raw materials cost for room-temperature sodium-ion batteries in comparison with common lithium-ion battery systems. The results indicate that room-temperature sodium-ion batteries are promising alternatives in the field of large-scale energy storage from the viewpoint of battery economic perspective.