Swedish battery materials company Altris AB, which specializes in producing highly sustainable cathode materials for rechargeable sodium batteries, has officially opened its first office in China. The Guangzhou-based team will work to promote the company’s innovative cathode material, Fennac, to the Chinese market, as well as provide tailored local support to new and existing customers.

The opening of the new office comes at a time where interest in producing sodium-ion batteries is high and when there is generally a global increased demand for batteries. Chinese battery giant CATL also recently declared that they believe the performance of sodium-ion batteries to be roughly the same, or even better than the lithium-ion batteries they currently produce, in all aspects.

CATL has led the way and has announced that there will be a value chain to produce such batteries by 2023.

Since CATL’s announcement, interest in Fennac has notably increased. As interest in Altris’ product grows in China, the local sales and support team will expand to match customer’s needs. The company is also planning to scale up production of Fennac to an industrial level in 2022.

This includes the building of a new industrial scale manufacturing unit in Sweden, with the annual capacity to produce 2,000 tonnes of the cathode Fennac, enabling 1GWh of sustainable batteries.

Fennac (often called “Prussian White” among battery researchers) is a framework material consisting of sodium, iron carbon and nitrogen (Na_xFe[Fe(CN)₆] with x>1.9). The large pores inside the material enable the capture and storage of a range of atoms or molecules making the compound highly interesting for a range of applications.

Altris has developed a method to produce Fennac in a form that is suited for use as a cathode material in sodium-ion batteries. The utilization of the iron as a source of electrons and completely filling the material with sodium provides a theoretical capacity of 170 mAh/g and average voltage output of 3.2 V vs sodium.

Fennac is produced via a patented low-temperature and pressure synthesis route, in a fully-sodiated form, obligatory for application as a cathode material. Altris can produce and sell the material for application as a positive electrode material, for fundamental research purposes or for other applications such as photochromic windows.