ENTISE Project to Develop Environmentally Friendly, Cost-Effective Sodium-Ion Batteries Kicks Off

The ENTISE project, focused on developing sodium-ion batteries for scalable industrial energy storage, has successfully commenced. Sodium-ion batteries are seen as a promising solution for a sustainable, resource-efficient future in energy storage. Sodium is not only inexpensive and abundant but also safe and easy to recycle. However, the challenge lies in translating this technology into industrially viable and scalable cells. This is the goal of ENTISE (German: Entwicklung der Natrium-Ionen-Technologie für industriell skalierbare Energiespeicher - EN: Development of the Sodium-Ion Technology for Industrially Scalable Energy Storage).

The project is led by a consortium of 15 working groups from 13 companies and universities, with German battery manufacturer VARTA AG serving as the initiator and coordinator. ENTISE is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with approximately €7.5 million. The project was officially approved in May, with Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger presenting the funding notice. The consortium recently marked the beginning of the project with a kick-off event at VARTA AG.

ENTISE aims to advance the development of existing material concepts and processes, particularly focusing on improving the storage capacity of the cathode and anode. Optimizing materials, including electrolytes, will play a crucial role in this endeavor. The project will also work on enhancing cycling stability—ensuring that battery cells maintain stable performance even after repeated charging and discharging—by developing and using new and improved electrode materials and coatings.

A central aspect of the project involves producing sufficient quantities of these materials to construct resilient laboratory samples, ultimately leading to prototypes in a round cell format.

The collaboration between industrial and research partners aims to scale up the individual components from laboratory to pre-industrial levels during the final project phase. The goal is to develop a small series of round cells that can be evaluated in practical applications, such as electric vehicles and stationary energy storage systems. The project will also include a technical, economic, and ecological assessment of the resulting technologies.