New Coulometry Technique for Li-ion Durability Analysis
- Xilectric, Inc
Large Li-ion factories are being built around the world in an attempt to dramatically lower cost through economies of scale. At the same time, new market opportunities are becoming accessible to Li-ion as the technology improves. Cycle life varies tremendously depending on cycling conditions, chemistry, cell design, and manufacturing quality. Technologies that improve abuse tolerance or cycle life of Li-ion would have large interest for both existing and emerging Li-ion chemistries. But proving new technologies or even iterating on existing formulations to improve cycle life is challenging given that Li-ion chemistries exist that can cycle for many years. Such long evaluation timeframes are not conducive to technical advancement. Energy storage solutions are defined by the application requirements. Grid level storage relating to voltage stability or regulation control require short cycles that operate with high frequency. Automotive applications as well as renewable integration require frequent use of energy storage of significant capacity. Optimizing pack design for various applications requires both technical and economic models of cell performance and lifetime. Knowledge of cell performance under various operating environments and usage patterns is required. However, cycle life varies tremendously depending on cycling conditions. An optimal design for one condition may not be ideal for another. Using tools that exist today, it is extremely difficult to prove-out the effect of various operating conditions on electrochemical storage durability using simple battery cyclers. The current approaches are painfully slow and provide convoluted data with respect to durability. New characterization techniques are required that provide rapid insight on capacity loss and degradation mechanisms with sufficient clarity to make informed design decisions. This project will develop a new battery characterization tool that allows the measuring of capacity loss rates of Li-ion batteries under a variety of specific use scenarios. Xilectric’s proposed characterization technique provides insights not available from existing techniques providing a more complete picture of the capabilities of the variant of Li-ion chemistry under test. In particular, our technique is able to provide several measures of fidelity under realistic cycling conditions while avoiding artificial accelerated aging conditions such as extreme temperatures and potentials as well as full depth of discharge cycling. The information provided by the new test can be used to develop better battery management algorithms, to improve on cell design, and to select Li-ion formulations best suited to the end-user application. Once validated, Xilectric would expect strong commercial interest in the new device from various Li-ion cell manufacturers, end-users, researchers, and academic institutions. The Phase I program successfully prototyped an initial version of the new metrology hardware. It also successfully demonstrated two new unique ways of characterizing Li-ion batteries.
- Research Organization:
- Xilectric INC
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Vehicle Technologies Office (EE-3V)
- DOE Contract Number:
- sc0018908
- OSTI ID:
- 1506899
- Type / Phase:
- SBIR (Phase I)
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-XIL18908
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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