A surprising breakthrough could help sodium-ion batteries rival lithium—and even turn seawater into drinking water. Scientists discovered that keeping water inside a key battery material, instead of removing it as traditionally done, dramatically boosts performance. The “wet” version stores nearly twice as much charge, charges faster, and remains stable for hundreds of cycles, placing it among the top-performing sodium battery materials ever reported.
Sodium ion has the same “energy density”, but lower density because of its honeycomb structure.
This story is actually about a sodium-vanadium wet battery, not sodium ion. NaVn batteries are a wet flow battery that have been around for a while, they are intended for stationary power use.