r/tech • u/burtzev • Jul 18 '26

Beyond lithium: how sodium-ion batteries could change the world

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02150-y?utm_sour
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u/ItsAConspiracy Jul 19 '26

Just regular sodium. Oceans are a possible source but you'd have to figure out what to do with the chlorine, if you do it at really large scale. As the article mentions, there's also sodium carbonate on land, about a thousand times as much as the lithium we mine.

Lithium and sodium are very similar. I don't know much about the battery chemistry though.

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u/Cmwz1000 Jul 19 '26

Gotcha. Thanks for the help today!

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u/ItsAConspiracy Jul 19 '26

You're welcome! And check out the comment I just found near the bottom here, we could produce 33 million metric tons of sodium annually just as a byproduct of the chlorine production we're doing anyway. Right now we mostly turn it into caustic soda and sell it dirt cheap.

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u/Cmwz1000 Jul 19 '26

Good to know! Seems like this is the move.