Chair of India’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council, Ajay Sood, is a man with a mission. He wants the Asian nation to investigate alternatives to lithium-ion energy storage, as it scales up for electric transport. However, that is not a straight-forward matter, on account of India’s lithium-ion battery dilemma.
Unpacking India’s Lithium-Ion Battery Dilemma
India needs to scale up its battery production, to meet demands of electric transport. A lithium-ion battery dilemma makes this far from simple though. The Indian sub-continent has some 10% of the world’s lithium-metal reserves, but mining has not taken off. Moreover, what would happen when those reserves ran out?
“The question,”Ajay Sood posed to Live Mint, “Is can we do sodium-ion technology on a commercial scale? Perhaps that should be our goal, because sodium metal is more abundant.” Moreover, he adds, maybe India could adapt aluminum-air batteries to the purpose, although it might need to implement battery swapping in order to achieve this.
Everybody is Trying to Improve Lithium. What About Sodium?
Sodium-ion batteries have been on the back burner, since lithium-ion established itself as a force to be reckoned with. However, sodium is beginning to come to the party, because is safer, but otherwise equivalent to lithium-ion. Moreover, India already has some indigenous knowledge, thanks to local government agencies and commercial developments.
Live Mint chatted with the founder of an integrated Indian lithium-ion battery manufacturer and re-cycler. The founder commented, “The biggest challenge for emerging solutions such as sodium-ion, and aluminum air batteries, is how quickly their manufacturing cost can be brought down to a level where they can be integrated in the supply chain.”
Therefore, it seems that the commercial odds are stacked in favor of lithium-ion in India, for now at least. Although that could change, if Indian government efforts to resolve the lithium-ion battery dilemma succeeded. Then either, or both of sodium-ion, and perhaps aluminum-air could take off. Perhaps lithium-ion has taken us as far as it can?
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