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High-Sodium Diet?

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-26

The production line of sodium-nickel batteries at a factory in Changxing County, Zhejiang Province of China. Photographer: Tan Yunfeng/VCG via Getty Images

Looks like sodium-ion battery development is moving quite quickly. In addition to the announcement by Northvolt last week, several Chinese companies are also involved in the development, production, and use of sodium-ion battery products.Seems rather ironic since the original article I saw touted a reduction of supply dependency on China (which is a big producer of lithium-ion batteries) due to use of sodium-ion technology.

Sodium-ion battery chemistry provides lower energy density compared to lithium-ion battery chemistry. This means that for the same quantity of stored energy a sodium-ion battery will be larger/heavier than a lithium-ion battery. However, sodium-ion technology also costs less than lithium-ion technology. This makes a sodium-ion chemistry more attractive for energy storage applications where lower cost is a higher priority than size and weight constraints. An example of such an application would be supplemental energy storage for the power grid.

Battery size and weight are relatively more important for electric vehicles. So lithium-ion technology is likely to persist for vehicular applications. For vehicles where a smaller quantity of stored energy (which translates to a shorter range of travel) is acceptable, sodium-ion technology may still be useful. Chery, a Chinese car maker, has said that it will use CATL’s sodium-ion batteries to power its shorter-range vehicles. China-based CATL is reputedly the world’s largest manufacturer of battery cells for electric vehicles.

Engineering Sustainability Technology

Breakthrough battery?

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-23

A Swedish company has announced a lithium-free sodium-ion battery that is supposed to be cheaper and more sustainable. It has an energy density of 160 Wh/kg.

It will require more development before becoming commercially competitive. Energy density and cost considerations vary from application to application so this sodium-ion battery development is still a good step forward.

Lithium-ion battery densities have improved enormously in the last decade, see this article. (Note, the bar chart shows volumetric energy density, Wh/l, and not mass energy density Wh/kg).

In early 2023 a record of just over 700 Wh/kg (1650 Wh/l) was set for Li-ion batteries. A comparison of energy densities for various battery chemistries is shown here. A history of Li-ion batteries can be found here.

Tags Engineering, Environment, Sustainability

Uncategorized

IEEE Structure

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-19

If you have a hankering to learn the overall organizational structure of the IEEE, you can look it up here.

Benefits Membership

Discounts for IEEE Members

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-18

IEEE members get discounts on a variety of products. Check them out here.

Engineering Technology

IEEE Technical Activities

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-17

A message from the IEEE Technical Activities VP, John Verboncoeur, can be found here.

Except: “Our strategic priorities for 2023 include participation in the IEEE-wide efforts in Climate Change and Sustainable Technologies, imagining future products and services and new audiences, providing value to and growing existing audiences, and building on our diverse and inclusive community including implementation of the new IEEE Fellows process. We also take a look at exemplars for leveraging cross-cutting technology areas via collaboration among TA entities, increasingly important for addressing the technology grand challenge problems of our time. Lastly, we will take a look at the TA Tech Talk series.”

Technical Activities Operations also hosted a talk on farm technology (Not Your Grandfather’s Tractor).

Uncategorized

Workforce Skills Communication Gap

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-16

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Research Center and HP have produced a report on a Workforce Skills Communication Gap.

From the Executive Summary: “The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine whether, or to what extent, institutions are using workforce trends to align and measure learning outcomes and help students communicate their level of workplace skill proficiencies to potential employers. If students can’t effectively communicate their level of workforce skill development across different areas and articulate their strengths using language that aligns with employers’ and industry experts’ expectations, a perceived skills gap will continue to exist.”

An overview of the research can be found here and there is a playbook here.

Education Engineering Technology

Raspberry Pi Pico

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-16

Today there was a talk hosted by the IEEE Madison and SE Michigan CS and YP groups which provided an overview of the Raspberry Pi Pico Hardware and Software.

From the vendor: “The Raspberry Pi Pico series is a range of tiny, fast, and versatile boards built using RP2040, the flagship microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi in the UK”.

From the vendor: “Designed by Raspberry Pi, RP2040 features a dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor with 264kB internal RAM and support for up to 16MB of off-chip flash. A wide range of flexible I/O options includes I2C, SPI, and – uniquely – Programmable I/O (PIO).”

The Pico boards are available for as low as $4.00

The presentation material, reference links, and some programming material can be found here.

Careers Engineering

Career Happiness – Do You Have It?

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-16

I listened to a career happiness webinar put on by the IEEE. It was pretty good. The tldr is that we should know what we want to be when we grow up and then make appropriate trade-offs. The focusing that the speaker provided was helpful (even if we may have heard it before).

You can find the recordings of this two-part webinar at the links below:

Career Happiness Part 1

Career Happiness Part 2