cheap and sustainable alternative to lithium

The promising salt battery is officially in mass production. The battery is made with salt instead of lithium, making it cheaper and much easier to scale than current batteries. The salt batteries are particularly promising as a kind of buffer tank for wind and solar farms, or as a backup for data centers.

The batteries are made by the American Natron Energy and the factory is even in Holland. Holland, Michigan, where from now on 600 megawatts of storage capacity must be created every year.

The major advantage of salt batteries is the raw material: salt is cheap and widely available. Furthermore, aluminum and iron are needed, which are also widely available in the US. This means that the batteries can be developed without hassle about international raw material prices. According to Natron, this can also be done very quickly and it would be cheaper than traditional lithium-ion batteries.

More benefits: more sustainable and faster

The salt batteries also last much longer than lithium-ion. Natron claims that its batteries last 50,000 deep charge cycles, while lithium only lasts 3,500 times. The salt batteries do not need to cool down between charges to prevent damage or wear. Moreover, little can go wrong, because salt is not easily flammable.

Moreover, they can be loaded very heavily, and are therefore full in 5 to 15 minutes, while large lithium batteries can take several hours, especially without special cooling measures. As for cooling: the salt batteries would also be usable from -20 to 50 degrees Celsius, while lithium is a bit more finicky.

Particularly suitable as a ‘buffer vessel’

There are also disadvantages: the energy density is even lower than with lithium-ion. In other words, you need more battery to store the same amount of energy. That’s not attractive for portable devices and cars, but it doesn’t matter if you just want to use the battery for a lot of energy storage.

The attractive characteristics of the battery make it particularly suitable for situations where lithium is currently in short supply. So for energy storage: next to a large solar park or wind farm, the salt batteries can quickly store a lot of energy, so that it can be supplied back to the grid just as quickly later. That is ideal, because then you smooth out the peaks and valleys of green energy. The battery is full when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and supplies power when it is dark and we need power.

Startup Aquabattery is also working on a salt battery in the Netherlands. That company is still in the testing phase. But this first factory is also a kind of test for Natron, which should form the blueprint for many more factories that will make many more of these types of batteries.

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