Volume 52

A Techno-Economic Assessment of Sodium-ion Pouch and Coin Cells for Commercial Applications Manjunath L Nilugal, Venkatasailanathan Ramadesigan

Abstract

Sodium-ion batteries are becoming prominent among next-generation energy storage technologies due to their abundant raw materials and seamless integration with existing lithium-ion battery manufacturing units.
Sodium-ion batteries are anticipated to be deployed in microgrid applications and low-speed electric vehicles. A techno-economic analysis of these batteries is required to assess their potential from a cost and performance perspective. In this work, the modelling framework is developed to analyse the cost of the sodium-ion pouch and coin cell using the cell-level parameters. The numerical simulation is performed for the coin cell under various operating conditions to validate its performance with the experimental results. The electrode surface area is calculated using the electrochemical model and parameter estimation technique to design the pouch cell. The total cost of the cell is calculated by considering material, process, and overhead costs. The raw material cost for which the market price is unavailable is estimated using the cost estimation model. The study shows that the sodium-ion coin cell costs 209 $/kWh, and the pouch cell costs 240 $/kWh. The cost breakdown of various cell components is analysed. The study is further extended to account for full-fledged bulk production, discounting the process and overhead costs. It can be inferred from the study that the cost of the cathode is comparatively higher among cell materials, underscoring the necessity to develop cost-effective and high-capacity cathode material for sodium-ion batteries.

Keywords Sodium-ion batteries, physics-based model, PyBaMM, cost analysis, BatPaC