With the rapid development of portable electronic devices and new energy electric vehicles, the production of lithium-ion batteries has reached an unprecedented scale, and major lithium battery manufacturers are constantly expanding their production capacity, which will inevitably lead to the massive consumption of lithium resources and the increase in prices.
In fact, lithium is not a rich resource, the content in the earth’s crust is only 0.0065%, and the distribution of lithium resources is uneven, 70% of lithium is distributed in South America. If the current development speed of lithium batteries is not considered for recycling, the application of lithium batteries will be severely restricted by lithium resources in a few decades. If lithium batteries are applied to the energy storage market, this process will surely be accelerated.
In addition, the rising price of lithium is also not conducive to its practical application in large-scale energy storage. And the sodium resource, which is in the same main group as lithium, has similar physical and chemical properties, and its abundance in the earth’s crust is ranked 6th. More importantly, sodium is distributed all over the world and is completely independent of resource and geographical restrictions. Compared with lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries have a very large resource advantage. On the other hand, sodium ion batteries have great potential price advantages due to the low price of sodium, and are very suitable for applications in low-speed electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage.
