Hydrogen salt rechargeable battery with lower cost than lithium battery

Recently, a new type of rechargeable battery technology has been successfully developed with the lowest cost being only one-tenth that of Lithium Batteries. Sumitomo plans to commercialize this molten salt battery in 2015 for use in electric vehicles and home-use power equipment.

The fuel cell and battery technologies developed by using the molten salt formed by melting as an electrolyte have been developed for decades. However, previous molten salt batteries require high temperatures in excess of 300 degrees Celsius to keep the electrolyte in a liquid state. Sumitomo Electric's cooperation with Kyoto University developed a sodium salt material with a melting point of only 57 degrees Celsius.

The new molten salt battery has twice the energy density of the Lithium Battery, and it can double the distance of the electric vehicle under the same battery volume. Therefore, automobile manufacturers will be able to use this technology to reduce the volume and weight of battery modules in electric vehicles and increase their efficiency. In addition, the molten salt battery also has the characteristics of high temperature, shock resistance, and is more secure than lithium Battery Electric vehicles.

Since the basic material used for molten salt batteries is the sodium salt, the cost is obviously much lower than that of lithium. The current estimated cost of molten salt batteries is about 20,000 yen per kilowatt-hour, which is 1/10th that of Japanese manufacturers' lithium batteries and 1/5 of China's lithium batteries.

Of course, compared to a lithium battery operating at room temperature, a molten salt battery with a drastically reduced melting point still needs to be maintained at a temperature of 80 degrees Celsius to work properly. Therefore, Sumitomo Corp. currently plans to use this product in applications that require long-term uninterrupted work, such as home power and electric buses.