Discharge properties of sodium-sulfur batteries at room temperature

The sodium/sulfur(Na/S) battery has many advantages such as high theoretical specific energy(760Wh/kg), and low material cost based on the abundance of electrode material in the earth. It has been reported that the electrochemical properties of sodium/sulfur cell above , utilized a solid ceramic electrolyte and liquid sodium and sulfur electrodes. A lot of researches have been performed in this field. Recently, Na/S battery system was applied for electricity storage system for load-leveling. One of severe problems of sodium/sulfur battery was high operating temperature above , which could induce the explosion and corrosion by molten sodium, sulfur and polysulfides. In order to develop sodium battery operated at low temperature, sodium ion battery has been studied using carbon anode, and sodium oxides cathodes. However, the energy densities of the sodium ion batteries were much lower than high temperature sodium/sulfur cell. In this study, the sodium/sulfur battery with 1M is tested at room temperature. The charge-discharge mechanism was discussed based on XRD, DSC, SEM and EDS results.