While Li ion batteries are intended to be operated within a mild temperature window, their structural and chemical complexity could lead to unanticipated local electrochemical events that could cause extreme temperature spikes, which, in turn, could trigger more undesired and sophisticated reactions in the system. Visualizing and understanding the response of battery electrode materials to thermal abuse conditions could potentially offer a knowledge basis for the prevention and mitigation of the safety hazards. Here we show a comprehensive investigation of thermally driven chemomechanical interplay in a Li 0.5 Ni 0.6 Mn 0.2 Co 0.2 O 2 (charged NMC622) cathode material. We report that, at the early stage of the thermal abuse, oxygen release and internal Li migration occur concurrently, and are accompanied by mechanical disintegration at the mesoscale. At the later stage, Li protrusions are observed on the secondary particle surface due to the limited lithium solubility in non-layered lattices. The extraction of both oxygen and lithium from the host material at elevated temperature could influence the chemistry and safety at the cell level via rearrangement of the electron and ion diffusion pathways, reduction of the coulombic efficiency, and/or causing an internal short circuit that could provoke a thermal runaway.
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Battery Internal Short Detection Methodology Using Cell Swelling Measurements
Li-ion battery internal short circuits are a major safety issue for electric vehicles, and can lead to serious consequences such as battery thermal runaway. An internal short can be caused by mechanical abuse, high temperature, overcharging, and lithium plating. The low impedance or hard internal short circuit is the most dangerous kind. The high internal current flow can lead to battery temperature increase, thermal runaway, and even explosion in a few seconds. Algorithms that can quickly detect such serious events with a high confidence level and which are robust to sensor noise are needed to ensure passenger safety. False positives are also undesirable as many thermal runaway mitigation techniques, such as activating pyrotechnic safety switches, would disable the vehicle. Conventional methods of battery internal short detection, including voltage and surface temperature based algorithms, work well for a single cell. However, these methods are difficult to apply in large scale battery packs with many parallel cells. In this study, we propose a new internal short detection method by using cell swelling information during the early stages of a battery heating caused by an internal short circuit. By measuring cell expansion force, higher confidence level detection can be achieved for an internal short circuit in an electric vehicle scale battery pack.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1762247
- PAR ID:
- 10190780
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2020 American Control Conference (ACC)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1143 to 1148
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract The safety issue represents a long‐standing obstacle that retards large‐scale applications of high‐energy lithium batteries. Among different causes, thermal runaway is the most prominent one. To date, various approaches have been proposed to inhibit thermal runaway; however, they suffer from some intrinsic drawbacks, either being irreversible (one‐time protection), using volatile and flammable electrolytes, or delayed thermal protection (140–150 °C). Herein, this work exploits a non‐volatile, non‐flammable, and thermo‐reversible polymer/ionic liquid gel electrolyte as a built‐in safety switch, which provides highly precise and reversible thermal protection for lithium batteries. At high temperature, the gel electrolyte experiences phase separation and deposits polymer on the electrode surfaces/separators, which blocks Li+insertion reactions and thus prevents thermal runaway. When the temperature decreases, the gel electrolyte restores its original properties and battery performance resumes. Notably, the optimal protection effect is achieved at 110 °C, which is the critical temperature right before thermal runaway. More importantly, such a thermal‐protection process can repeat multiple times without compromising the battery performance, indicating extraordinary thermal reversibility. To the authors' knowledge, such a precise and reversible protection effect has never been reported in any electrolyte systems, and this work opens an exciting avenue for safe operation of high‐energy Li batteries.
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Abstract Safety issues remain a major obstacle toward large‐scale applications of high‐energy lithium‐ion batteries. Embedding thermo‐responsive polymer switching materials (TRPS) into batteries is a potential strategy to prevent thermal runaway, which is a major cause of battery failures. Here, thin, flexible, highly responsive polymer nanocomposites enabled by bio‐inspired nanospiky metal (Ni) particles are reported. These unique Ni particles are synthesized by a simple aqueous reaction at gram‐scale with controlled surface morphology and composition to optimize electrical properties of the nanocomposites. The Ni particles provide TRPS films with a high room‐temperature conductivity of up to 300 S cm−1. Such TRPS composite films also have a high rate (<1 s) of resistance switching within a narrow temperature range, good reversibility upon on/off switching, and a tunable switching temperature (
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This paper intends to provide design selections of hybrid powertrain architectures in 48 V mild hybrid electric vehicles. Based on the location of the electric machine in the driveline, the hybrid powertrain architectures can be categorized into five groups, P0, P1, P2, P3, and P4. This paper uses simulation software to investigate the fuel economy improvements and emission reduction of 48 V mild hybrid electric vehicles with P0, P1, and P2 architectures. A baseline conventional and a 12 V start/stop vehicle models based on the production vehicle are built for comparison. The 48 V battery pack model is based on experimental data including open-circuit voltage and internal resistance of a 20 Ah lithium polymer battery cell. Four standard driving cycles are used to assess the fuel economy and emissions of the vehicle models. With features of engine idle elimination, electric power assist, and regenerative braking, the 48 V P0 and P1 respectively gains average 13.5% and 15.5% simulated fuel economy compared to baseline vehicle. The 48 V P2 enables feature of electric launch/driving and improves the fuel economy by average 18.5% better than baseline vehicle. The 48 V mild hybrid system seems to be one of the promising techniques to meet future fuel economy standards and emission regulations.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.23919/ACC45564.2020.9147956
