Prospective Sustainability Screening of Sodium-Ion Battery Cathode Materials

摘要

Sodium-ion batteries (SIB) are considered as a promising alternative toovercome existing sustainability challenges related to Lithium-ion batteries(LIB), such as the use of critical and expensive materials with high environmentalimpacts. In contrast to established LIBs, SIBs are an emergingtechnology in an early stage of development where a challenge is to identifythe most promising and sustainable cathode active materials (CAM) forfurther research and potential commercialization. Thus, a comprehensiveand flexible CAM screening method is developed, providing a fast andcomprehensive overview of potential sustainability hotspots for supportingcathode material selection. 42 different SIB cathodes are screened andbenchmarked against eight state-of-the-art LIB-cathodes. Potential impactsare quantified for the following categories: ⅰ) Cost as ten-year average; ⅱ)Criticality, based on existing raw material criticality indicators, and ⅲ) thelife cycle carbon footprint. The results reveal that energy density is one ofthe most important factors in all three categories, determining the overallmaterial demand. Most SIB CAM shows a very promising performance,obtaining better results than the LIB benchmark. Especially the PrussianBlue derivatives and the manganese-based layered oxides seem to be interestingcandidates under the given prospective screening framework.