Sodium battery replace lithium battery? Or just supplement

The battery sector is like the sun at high noon, the sodium ion battery also become a new hot point of A shares these days.Why is sodium battery so popular since the lithium battery is actually the one that is the most commonly used ?The actions of the leading battery company and the government are the reasons.

CATL (300750) (300750.SZ), the lithium battery leader, released the it’s first generation of sodium ion battery in July 29, and said that it has started the industrialization layout of sodium ion battery. It will form a basic industrial chain in 2023 to bring sodium ion battery into the public eye. Since then to August 27, the sodium ion battery concept sector is up for 15.16% .

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) expressed that it will support for the commercialization of sodium ion battery and promote industry standards of sodium ion battery as soon as possible in reply letter in August 25.Then next day, concept stock of sodium ion battery soared.

Sodium battery is the new hotness of the capital Market

The work principle of sodium ion battery is similar with lithium ion battery, so it can be compatible with existing lithium electric equipment. Only a small upgrade need to be done when the battery factory reuse lithium battery production line to produce the sodium ion battery. At the same time, the industrial chain of these two battery product is similar, including raw materials in the upstream, cells and batteries in the middle stream and applications in the downstream. The difference mainly lies in the positive and negative electrode materials .

Since this year, the listed companies with business layout of sodium ion battery and battery material have become the hot property in secondary market .

There are more than 20 enterprises around the world have been committed to the R&D of sodium ion batteries as of 2020 according to the research report, among which domestic enterprises mainly include CATL, Zhongkehaina which is unlisted ,  sodium Innovation Energy Source which is held 40% stake byZhejiang Pharmaceutical (600216) (600216.SH) , Penghui Energy (300438) (300438.sZ), Xinwangda (300207) (300207.sZ), And Shandong Zhanggu (002598) (00) 2598. SZ).

According to iFinD of Flush (300033), as of the close of August 27, the annual increase of Shandong Zhanggu, Xinwangda, Penghui Energy and Zhejiang Pharmaceutical reached 135.80%, 33.49%, 25.21% and 22.14% respectively.

The composition of sodium ion battery also mainly includes positive electrode, negative electrode, diaphragm, electrolyte and collector like lithium battery. However, there are great differences in the choice of anode and anode materials.At present, the company with layout of sodium ion cathode materials include Greenme (002340) (002340.SZ), Rongbai Technology (688005.SH); For anode materials of sodium ion batteries, Xiangfenghua (300890) (300890.SZ) developed high-performance hard carbon anode materials; Zhongke Electric (300035) (300035.SZ) said that the company in graphite anode materials, non-graphite anode materials and other fields have technical development reserves. In addition, Huayang (600348) (600348.SH) has layouts on both positive and negative materials of sodium ions.

From the beginning of this year to the close of August 27, Huayang Shares and Rongbai Technology rose 160.26% and 143.46% respectively, Zhongke Electric and Gremmei shares rose 99.92% and 92.11%, and Xiangfenghua rose 10.42% in the year.

Could sodium batteries replace lithium batteries?

Cost vs Performance

Although the physical and chemical characteristics and storage mechanism of sodium and lithium are similar，sodium ion batteries are relatively more stable in electrochemical performance and safety. At the same time, sodium ion batteries are also cheaper in cost.

The advantage in cost is determined by the abundance of resources. Sodium reserves rank sixth in the earth’s crust, with uniform geographical distribution while the reserves of lithium resources in the earth’s crust are less than 1/1000 of sodium, with regional distribution. In addition, the anode of the sodium-ion battery can use aluminum concentrators rather than copper concentrators used in lithium battery, which reduces the cost and weight of the battery. Tianfeng Securities also pointed out in its research report that the material cost of sodium-ion batteries has 30 to 40 percent lower than that of lithium-ion batteries.
Although the cost of sodium ion battery is lower, under the current technological level, the performance gap between sodium ion battery and lithium battery is very large.The first is energy density. The ion radius of sodium ion is larger than that of lithium ion, so sodium ion cannot be embedded into graphite material, and it require hard carbon or other anode materials，which has a lower energy density than graphite material. For example, the energy density of CATL’s first generation of sodium battery is 160Wh/kg, much lower than the 180Wh/kg of a lithium iron phosphate battery and 240Wh/kg of a ternary battery.

The second problem is the number of cycles. The current charge and discharge times of sodium ion battery are about 1000 ~2000 times, which still has an obvious gap with the ternary lithium battery.

Limited by these two bottlenecks, the application scenarios of sodium ion battery in the future are likely to focus on energy storage, low-speed new energy vehicles and other fields, and cannot completely replace the lithium battery.

In fact, battery manufacturers have their own plans for sodium-ion batteries. On August 27, Shandong Zhanggu replied that the original intention of manufacturing sodium ion batteries is not to replace terpolymer or lithium iron phosphate batteries, but to replace lithium titanate batteries, so the application scenarios are mainly low temperature and high cycle times. General mainstream battery manufacturers is mainly for the car or energy storage.