2. Sodium and lithium conversion electrodes Due to the higher abundance of sodium in the earths crust than lithium, there is interest in replacing lithium as the negative electrode material with sodium in batteries. Consider a battery using a conversion reaction (as discussed in Lecture 5.2) involving CoO as the cathode as shown below, where A = Li or Na: CoO + 2 A Co + A2O (a) Write the balanced anodic and cathodic half-reactions when the battery uses a lithium anode and when it uses a sodium anode. (b) Use the Gibbs formation energies from Fuller Appendix C to calculate the theoretical cell potential for the overall reaction when using both types of anodes. (c) Determine the theoretical specific capacity for the cell (units: Ah/g) and the energy density (units: Wh/kg) for both types of batteries, assuming there is 1 mole of CoO in the cell. Verify that the energy density calculated using the two equations from the end of Lecture 5.3 (shown below) give you the same answer. = = (Huggins Eqn 1.15) (d) On the basis of your answers in (c), do you think its still worthwhile to pursue sodium ion batteries? Why or why not?