Development of Intermediate Temperature Sodium-Metal Halide Battery

The sodium-metal halide battery has gained increasing interests as a large-scale energy storage device for renewable energy applications due to high specific energy and power density. They exhibit several advantages over the conventional sodium-sulfur (NaS) battery, which include higher voltage, safe cell failure mode, and easiness of assembly in discharged state. A major obstacle in commercialization of sodium-metal halide battery is relatively high cost compared to the NaS battery. Our research at PNNL has focused on lowering the cost of the sodium-metal halide battery by decreasing the operating temperature less than 200°C. In this intermediate temperature range, low-cost high throughput manufacturing process can be applied using economical polymer seals and metal cases. Another effort has been geared towards replacing expensive Ni with economical active materials such Zn and Fe. In this presentation, our progress in the development of IT sodium-metal halide battery will be discussed in detail.